The Jewish Ghetto
Venice's Ghetto Nuovo is the world's first ghetto — the word itself derives from this place, from the geto (foundry) that occupied this island before the Venetian Republic confined its Jewish population here in 1516. The buildings are unusually tall for Venice: successive generations, forbidden to expand outward, built upward. The Museo Ebraico di Venezia tells the history of the community with unusual directness. Five synagogues survive; three are accessible on guided tours. The square at the centre retains the particular atmosphere of a community that continued to exist here for five hundred years.
Santa Maria dei Miracoli
Tucked into a narrow canal east of the Ghetto, the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli is the most beautiful small church in Venice — a shoebox of coloured marble built by Pietro Lombardo between 1481 and 1489, its surfaces of grey, white, and pink marble inlaid with precision that looks jewelled in strong light. The interior is a single nave with a raised nuns' choir at the far end, the barrel-vaulted ceiling painted with fifty prophets and saints. It is almost always relatively quiet; the contrast with the crowds at San Marco is complete.
Cicchetti on the Fondamenta
The Fondamenta degli Ormesini and the parallel Fondamenta della Misericordia in northern Cannaregio are the finest stretch of bacari in Venice — a sequence of traditional wine bars serving cicchetti and ombra to a clientele that is mostly Venetian. Osteria Al Timon, Osteria dell'Orto, and half a dozen others within walking distance offer the cicchetti tradition at its least theatrical: cod mantecato on bread, sardines in saor, small glasses of soave or prosecco. Come between 6pm and 8pm, when the aperitivo crowd is at its densest and the light on the canal is copper.
Staying in Cannaregio
Cannaregio is the most practical sestiere to use as a base in Venice. The station is at its western end; the vaporetto runs the full length of the Cannaregio Canal; and the accommodation is more affordable than Dorsoduro or San Marco. The area around the Ghetto and towards Madonna dell'Orto retains the density of Venetian daily life — a pharmacy, a hardware shop, a school — that the tourist zones have largely lost. The walk from the station to the Rialto through Cannaregio takes about twenty minutes and is better than any guidebook route for seeing how the city actually functions.
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