Best Venice Tickets

Venice is one of Italy's most unique and ancient cities, making it one of the favourite places for tourists. It is not only striking for some of its floating buildings or for its canals full of gondolas, but also for its cultural wealth, which is distributed in various museums, as well as for the beauty of its architecture.

From St. Mark's Basilica to the Leonardo Museum, passing through the Palazzo Mocenigo, the Fenice Theatre and the picturesque Doge's Palace. In this guide you can find out which are the best tickets to buy in Venice to get the most out of this magical city.

St Mark's Basilica is located in the heart of Venice's kilometre 0, St Mark's Square, and is the city's main Catholic church, but it is also a Byzantine building of great architectural value for its decorated mosaics. The church's relics also stand out, making it one of the busiest Venetian sites.

From the terrace of the basilica you will be able to contemplate fantastic open views. Keep in mind that it is one of the most visited places in Venice, so I recommend that you buy your tickets for St. Mark's Basilica in advance.

During your visit to St. Mark's Basilica you will be able to see the Pala D'Oro, which is a Byzantine goldsmith's work considered one of the temple's greatest relics, as well as the many Byzantine ornaments that adorn the interior of the temple. The building has been standing since 832 and was rebuilt almost 100 years later by architects from Constantinople to restore it after a fire.

The Doge's Palace is not only part of Venice's most famous skyline, it is also one of the main sites because it also houses the Correr Museum, the Marciana Library and the Archaeological Museum. If you book your ticket for the Doge's Palace you can visit each of these buildings in the complex as well as the city's Armoury and the Bridge of Sighs, which is the most famous bridge in Venice and is notable for the myths that are woven around it.

In the Doge's Palace, as well as marvelling at its architecture, which has been perfectly preserved since it was built more than 1,000 years ago, you can admire the frescoes on the ceilings. During your tour you will also be able to see the building that once held political power in Venice, which became one of the strongest maritime republics in Italy during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

If you decide to visit the Doge's Palace, be sure to admire the paintings of famous Renaissance artists such as Titian and Bos ch on the façades and marble walls of the building.

Leonardo Da Vinci was undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses of mankind and also one of the most influential artists. If you book a ticket for the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum you can discover Leonardo's inventor side and review his career in the city during the Renaissance through a collection of 60 machines of his authorship, which refer to his war engineering and civil engineering projects.

With tickets to this museum, whose tour lasts approximately 1 hour, you will pass through the 4 sections of the museum, which are fire, air, earth and water. As Leonardo left no elements unexplored, you will see plans and models of fledgling helicopters, huge war tanks, anatomical structures and replicas of some of his most famous works of art, such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper.

This is one of Venice's best kept secrets, but it doesn't mean you shouldn' t book your tickets for the Natural History Museum. With exhibits dating back over 700 million years, fossils of all kinds, zoological and botanical collections and even an aquarium, this is one of the best tickets to buy if you're planning to include the kids in your Venetian tour.

Housed in a 13th-century building on the banks of the Grand Canal, the museum is one of Italy's leading landmarks, largely due to its cetacean hall, where you can get a close-up look at the skeleton of a baleen whale and a young sperm whale, as well as the dinosaur fossils that proliferate all over the walls and testify to the museum's extensive research work.

If you want to see how the Venetian nobility lived in the city's golden age of the Renaissance and beyond, book tickets for the Palazzo Mocenigo. It is a unique building in which you will find a large number of works of art, frescoes and luxurious furniture from the period, as well as a collection of perfumes and garments arranged on mannequins.

The main attraction of the palace is the fresco in the green room, which is known as the Bridal Allegory by Jacopo Guarana, a late Baroque Venetian painter who was noted for having restored many of the paintings in St Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace, although his main work is in Palazzo Mocenigo.

The Teatro La Fenice is one of the most famous opera houses in the world and also one of the most eclectic. It is located on one of Venice's islands, so it can only be accessed via the canals, and its florid internal decoration attracted the attention of the most prominent artists. From Verdi and Rossini to Maria Callas, who now has a permanent exhibition in the theatre, all wanted to sing here.

If you book tickets for the La Fenice Theatre, you can visit the Central Hall, the Great Hall, the Royal Box and the Apollonian Rooms, which are characterised by luxurious red velvet armchairs, mirrors and chandeliers and baroque decorations on the ceilings. The theatre also has a rich history, as Giuseppe Verdi premiered some of his greatest works here, such as Attila, Rigoletto, La Traviata and Simon Bocanegra.

Peggy Guggenheim's collection in Venice is totally disruptive as it brings a typical Renaissance and Baroque city into the contemporary era, with works by famous artists such as Picasso, Pollock and Salvador Dalí. For this reason, if you want to see an alternative exhibition to the ones you can find in Venetian museums, don't miss the tickets for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, dedicated to the American patron of the arts who gives her name to the room.

On this tour you will also see some of Europe's most famous sculptures and other lesser-known works by Magritte, Calder, Matisse and Giacometti, who worked mainly in marble and whose works can now be visited in the Nasher Sculpture Garden, located in the back courtyard of the building that houses the Peggy Guggenheim collection.

If you want to experience an alternative show, but in true Venetian style, then you can't miss out on experiencing the city's travelling opera. In this show you will pass through different halls during the performance, following the live musicians throughout the show, while the actors interact with the audience, creating a unique experience.

In general, the performances consist of three classic operas, such as The Barber of Seville, Rigoletto or La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi, but it is not uncommon for the staging to include improvisations and other modifications to the itinerary that are common to this type of artistic exhibition. Moreover, buying tickets for these performances is the best way to get to know the Venice Opera.

Another option is to get closer to this musical genre by booking tickets for Baroque concert and Opera in Venice.

For a typically Venetian experience, you can book tickets for the Interpreti Veneziani concert, where you will enjoy a musical performance of works by Bach, Mozart or Vivaldi. In addition, with your ticket to the show, you will enjoy a dinner including fish or meat and 3 other classic dishes of the city.

The Interpreti Veneziani performance takes place in the Church of San Vidal, which is located in the San Marco neighbourhood, so you will also get to see one of the oldest churches in the city, which is not usually included in the main Venetian circuit and is not frequented by tourists who come to Venice.

Another of the artistic performances that you can find during your visit to Venice is that of the group I Musici Veneziani, an ensemble that performs some of the typical operas of the main Italian artists. Among them you will be able to listen to The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi in a show that will take you back to 18th century Venice, as the singers wear traditional baroque costumes during the performance.

The show lasts about an hour and a half, so it's an ideal choice if you're planning a short stay in the city, but still want to enjoy a Venezuelan opera performance. And if you book tickets for I Musici Veneziani, you will enjoy one of the best interpretations of the four concertos for violin and strings that refer to the nature scenes of each season of the year.

Feel like you want to have access to more buildings in Venice? You can choose to book the Venice Chorus Pass, a tourist card that will give you skip-the-line entry to 15 of the city's churches, some of which are lesser-known. In them, however, you can come across paintings by Tintoretto and Rubens and enjoy the architecture and styles of the different periods.

In each case you can visit the temples on your own or you can access an audio guide available in different languages. You'll also have time to tour the gardens and inner courtyards of the chapels within the complex, and you'll get a discount on city transport.