“To build a city where it is impossible to build a city is madness in itself, but to build there one of the most elegant and grandest of cities is the madness of genius.”“
Alexander Herzen
We didn’t need convincing about Venice. We already loved it.
We have returned several times over the years, and somehow we never feel finished with the city. We have stayed in different neighborhoods, visited during the Venice Biennale, wandered far beyond the major sights, and spent evenings walking streets that had been packed with visitors only hours earlier.
Every trip has shown us a slightly different Venice.
There are certainly places in the world we still haven’t visited, so returning somewhere we’ve already been is always a choice. With Venice, we keep making it.
Part of that is because the city changes depending on how you experience it. Where you stay matters. The season matters. The time of day matters. Even taking a different turn after crossing a familiar bridge can lead somewhere we haven’t seen before.
This summer, there was another difference. We weren’t experiencing Venice only through our own eyes.
Seeing Venice Through a Young Traveler’s Eyes
This time, our young traveler was with us, and we were curious to see what he would think.
Venice is unlike anywhere else we take him. There are no cars. Boats do everything from delivering packages to transporting people around the city. Streets suddenly end at canals. Bridges are part of everyday life. Even getting from the airport to your hotel can become an experience.
But we were also visiting during summer.
And it was hot. Really hot.
That made exploring a little more challenging. Venice requires walking, and then more walking, with plenty of bridges and stairs along the way. There were definitely moments when stopping sounded far more appealing than seeing one more church, campo, or canal.
Thankfully, there was Suso.
Sometimes Gelato Really Does Help
We have had plenty of gelato in Italy over the years, but Suso became particularly important on this trip. It is known as the best gelato in Venice, and the lines speak to that!
A gelato stop gave us a chance to cool down, find some shade, and decide what we actually wanted to do next. We slowed our pace instead of trying to push through the heat. We took the vaporetto when it made sense. We watched boats come and go. We stopped for food. And sometimes we simply wandered without worrying about what attraction we were supposed to see next.
That changed the rhythm of the trip.
The boats certainly helped. So did the maze of narrow streets and bridges and the fact that you never really know what you’ll find around the next corner. Getting lost wasn’t frustrating to him. It was part of exploring.
By the end of our visit, he had fallen in love with Venice too.
For us, that was one of the best parts of returning. We already had years of memories here. This time, we were watching someone create his own.
Why Do We Keep Returning to Venice?
It is a fair question, especially for travelers like us who have a very long list of places we still want to see.
Why return to the same city?
For one thing, Venice rewards repeat visits.
On a first trip, most people understandably want to see St. Mark’s Square, St. Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, the Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal. We did too, and we still enjoy returning to many of them.
But once you’ve seen the places you feel you have to see, Venice changes.
There is more time to wander through Cannaregio or Castello. You can cross over to Giudecca. You can sit beside a canal without worrying that you’re wasting valuable sightseeing time. You begin to notice the small churches, workshops, neighborhood restaurants, laundry hanging above narrow streets, and everyday life unfolding around you.
And then there is Venice at night.
The difference between Venice in the middle of the day and Venice after many of the day visitors have left can be remarkable. Streets quiet down. Restaurants fill with people settling in for dinner. Reflections shimmer across the canals, and you can hear the water in places where hours earlier you mostly heard the crowd.
Those quieter hours are a big part of why we keep returning.
But This Time, Something Felt Different
While we were introducing our young traveler to Venice, Ryan and I were noticing something else.
Venice didn’t feel exactly as we remembered it.
We have been visiting long enough to remember enormous cruise ships passing through the historic center. We remember trips when crowds around the major sights could become difficult to navigate. And like almost everyone who follows travel news, we have watched Venice become one of the world’s most frequently cited examples of overtourism.
Yet on our recent visits, including this summer, we repeatedly found ourselves questioning that familiar picture.
The canals appeared cleaner. Those massive cruise ships were no longer sailing past the historic center. We encountered crowded areas, certainly, but we also found remarkably quiet streets only a few bridges away.
Sometimes the difference was almost comical. One minute we would be surrounded by people heading toward Rialto or St. Mark’s. A few turns later, we could be standing beside a canal with hardly anyone else around.
We started paying closer attention.
And we started asking questions.
Has Venice Changed?
That question eventually became the basis of our newest article for FWT Magazine, “Has Venice Changed? Here’s What We Found.”
This wasn’t our first impression of Venice after a single visit. We were able to look at the city through the experiences of multiple trips over several years and compare what we were seeing with what we remembered.
We also talked with Venetians about the changes they have witnessed and considered some of the steps the city has taken to address the pressures of tourism.
In the article, we explore the cruise ship restrictions, Venice’s controversial day-tripper access fee, the difference between the city’s most congested areas and its quieter neighborhoods, and why staying overnight can completely change the experience.
But we also wanted to challenge an idea we hear often: that Venice has somehow been ruined by tourism and is no longer worth visiting.
Our experience has been far more complicated than that.
A Few Thoughts From Our FWT Magazine Story
“Just a few streets beyond the busiest corridors, the pace slows. Laundry stretches between weathered buildings, neighborhood cafés replace souvenir shops, and quiet campi appear almost unexpectedly.
One afternoon, we set out with nothing more ambitious than taking a walk.
We crossed bridge after bridge, photographing whatever caught our attention instead of searching for specific landmarks. Eventually, we reached one of Venice’s familiar surprises: a dead end at the water’s edge.
No bridge. No continuation.
Years earlier, we might have been frustrated.
Instead, we laughed.”
That observation gets to the heart of something we have learned after returning to Venice: don’t judge the entire city by its busiest few blocks.
St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge can be packed. That is real, and we don’t pretend otherwise. But Venice is much larger than those two areas.
Walk.
Turn without checking Google Maps.
Cross the bridge everyone else seems to be walking past.
Get on a vaporetto and get off somewhere you haven’t explored.
Some of our favorite Venice memories have come from doing exactly that.
Stay Long Enough to See Venice Change
“Venice is more than one of Italy’s most celebrated destinations. It is a living city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and home to generations of Venetians whose daily lives continue alongside the millions who visit each year.
Protecting a place like Venice isn’t about discouraging visitors. It’s about encouraging a different kind of visit, one that values curiosity over checklists, lingering over rushing, and genuine connection over collecting photographs.
That realization changed the way we experienced Venice.”
This is another point we emphasize in the FWT article because it has shaped our own experiences so much.
If possible, stay overnight.
We understand why people visit Venice for the day, particularly when it is part of a larger Italian itinerary. But leaving in the late afternoon means missing one of our favorite versions of the city.
We have walked through Venice late at night when streets we could barely move through earlier were nearly empty. We’ve lingered over dinner without thinking about the next attraction. We’ve watched boats move through dark canals and enjoyed simply having nowhere we needed to be.
It is difficult to understand Venice solely as a collection of attractions. Staying longer gives you a chance to experience it as a city.
Venice Is Still Complicated
We don’t want to romanticize the challenges Venice faces.
Tourism brings enormous economic benefits, but millions of visitors also put pressure on a fragile city and on the people who call it home. Venice is actively experimenting with ways to manage those pressures, and not every solution has been universally welcomed.
That complexity is part of what interested us.
Responsible travel doesn’t mean avoiding popular places simply because they are popular. For us, it means thinking about how we visit them: staying longer when possible, spending money with local businesses, respecting residential neighborhoods, learning about the place beyond its famous landmarks, and remembering that someone’s home is not simply our vacation backdrop.
Venice makes those questions particularly visible.
Read the Full Story in FWT Magazine
Our FWT Magazine article goes much deeper into what we found, including conversations with locals, changes in tourism, neighborhoods we enjoy exploring, the Venice Biennale, food, where we’ve stayed, and practical advice drawn from our repeated visits.
We arrived this summer already knowing that we loved Venice.
We left still loving it, but perhaps understanding it a little differently.
And we also left with another Venice convert.
Our young traveler may have needed some gelato and a few breaks from the heat to get there, but by the end of the trip, he understood why we keep coming back.
Now we just have to see how long it takes before one of us starts talking about returning again.
Read our full article: Has Venice Changed? Here’s What We Found — FWT Magazine
We are grateful to have our work featured in FWT Magazine and to share our travels alongside the work of so many talented food, wine, and travel writers.
We hope you will read the complete article and, while you are there, explore some of the other destination, culinary, and travel stories FWT Magazine has to offer.
© 2026 Wanderers Compass All Rights Reserved
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