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Often used as a film set, this fine 15th-century palace with its beautiful external “snail-shell” staircase is squeezed into a diminutive square. Following careful restoration, visitors can now climb the winding steps via five floors of loggias to a dome sheltering a splendid belvedere. From here there are magical views over the city’s rooftops.

This is by far the city’s most famous gondola repair and construction yard, though its active days may be numbered. The combined workshop-dwelling, its window sills clad with geraniums, is reminiscent of an Alpine chalet as the first occupants came from the mountainous Cadore region. Though closed to visitors, it backs on to a canal (Rio di San Gervasio e Protasio) so it’s easy to watch the goings-on as oar-propelled craft are brought in for caulking and cleaning.

A mystery involving the 15th-century statue of a famous courtesan.

Long masked in scaffolding since a 1996 arson attack left it gutted, the historic “Phoenix” theatre has finally risen from the flames. Selva’s 1792 opera house, just one of 17 theatres at the time, has staged countless world premieres including Rossini’s Tancredi in 1813, five operas commissioned of Verdi, most notably Rigoletto and La Traviata , and more recent works by Stravinsky and Luigi Nono. Legendary divas Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland have sung in this glorious setting.

A castle courtyard draped with creepers was chosen for this Vicenza theatre, designed by Palladio and completed by his disciple Vincenzo Scamozzi. The performing area is based on a Roman model, while the stage scenery is a replica of the city of Thebes, built for the inaugural play, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex , in 1585. Scaled statues and varying stage levels create clever tricks of perspective.

An unbeatable architectural classic.

The very first English-language traveller to write a detailed description of Venice, this eccentric gentleman from Somerset, England (1577–1617) compiled Crudities, with Observations of Venice (1611): “Such is the rarenesse of the situation of Venice, that it doth even amaze and drive into admiration all strangers that upon their first arrival behold the same.”

The sombre 1912 novel Death in Venice was both written and set in Venice and the Lido resort by the German Nobel Prize-winner (1875–1955). It tells the story of an ageing writer in dire need of relaxation who visits the city, but in the wake of an impossible infatuation slowly succumbs to the spreading cholera epidemic and dies.