For your Venice accommodation remember that the city is small and that from your Venice apartment you will be within reach of all the sites. San Marco apartments are most central and so are Rialto apartments.

The monuments which draw the largest crowds are the Basilica di San Marco - the mausoleum of the city's patron saint - and the Palazzo Ducale - the home of the doge and all the governing councils. Certainly these are the most dramatic structures in the city: the first a mosaic-clad emblem of Venice's Byzantine origins, the second perhaps the finest of all secular Gothic buildings.

Then, of course, there is the Ponte di Rialto (Rialto Bridge). The current structure was built in just three years, between 1588 and 1591, as a permanent replacement for the boat bridge and three wooden bridges that had spanned the Grand Canal at various times since the 12th Century. It remained the only way to cross the Grand Canal on foot until the Accademia Bridge was built in 1854.

The trade of glassblowing was once dominated by an elite group of craftsmen in the Venetian Republic, most notably on the island of Murano. Visit the ubiquitous glass shops on Murano or in Venice, and you'll find countless paperweights, glass beads and necklaces, knickknacks, and items of glass jewelry.