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(see Piazza San Marco).

The expensive elegance of Venice is most evident on this main thoroughfare linking Rialto and Piazza San Marco. Mercerie means haberdasher’s, although these days it is the realm of the designer fashion outlets who are able to afford the sky-high rents. Just below the ornate Torre dell’ Orologio archway is a sculpted female figure commemorating a housewife who lived here rentfree as a reward for inadvertently knocking a mortar into the street, killing a revolutionary leader and thus halting the short-lived Baiamonte Tiepolo revolt in 1310.

This spacious, elegant square is edged by cafés with smart, white-jacketed waiters and colourful awnings. Its most regular inhabitants seem to be unhurried pigeons, pecking around the ornate lampposts, and local children at play watched over by nannies and doting grandparents. Pride of place in the centre goes to a statue of Niccolò Tommaseo, patriot and author of the Risorgimento . At Carnival time a lively outdoor craft market is held here, although it is not quite up to the level of merrymaking seen here in olden times when there were magnificent balls and bull-fights. The latter events ended in 1802 when a stand collapsed on spectators.

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.

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.

The statue of celebrated Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni scrutinizes the milling crowds on this crossroads square. Strategically placed for a host of inviting bars crammed into the alleys radiating off it, “San Bartolo” serves as the fashionable hang-out for the city’s young and trendy. The northern end is occupied by the main post office, once home to Venice’s German community (see Germans). They worshipped in the Chiesa di San Bartolomeo (open 10am–noon Tue, Thu & Sat; free admission).

So overloaded was the 1668 façade of this church with ostentatious Baroque stone decorations that several statues were removed in 1878 to save it from collapse. It has been blasted by critics as “the height of architectural folly” and by John Ruskin (see Ruskin’s Venice, editor Arnold Whittick) as “one of the basest examples of the basest school of the Renaissance”. Devoid of religious symbols, it is given over wholly to the glorification of the aristocratic Fini family, who laid out 30,000 ducats for the job.

In 1985, the splendid salons of Palazzo Grassi were superbly restored under the supervision of leading architect Gae Aulenti. Set on the Grand Canal, the palace dates back to 1740 when a wealthy merchant family commissioned Giorgio Massari to design the building. It is located alongside the picturesque tree-shaded Campo San Samuele, which features a graceful Veneto-Byzantine bell tower.

Flamboyant Spanish artist and theatrical stage designer Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871–1950) adopted Venice as his home and muse, and transformed this ponderous 15th-century palace in Gothic-Venetian style into an exotic atelier. Although restoration is on-going, a number of rooms are open for temporary exhibitions. In the near future visitors will be able to admire Fortuny’s sumptuous velvets, renowned the world over, his famous pleated silk dresses, lamps, paintings, a remarkable stage curtain and fascinating 19th-century photographs.

Opening on to a lovely square next to the Grand Canal, this church is a further example of Venetian Baroque extravagance. Commissioned by the Barbaro family, its façade exalts their generations of maritime and political triumphs, with crests, galleys and statues. Relief maps along the lower plinth depict Zara, Candia, Padua, Rome, Corfu and Spalato, the fortified cities where many family members had served. Works of art inside the church include Venice’s only canvas by the Flemish artist Rubens, depicting a curvaceous Madonna and child. Tintoretto’s contributions are the Evangelists adorning the doors of the organ.