Grand Canal

Venice's main street is made of water. The Grand Canal snakes through the city in a reverse S-shape for 3.8 kilometres, from the railway station to St. Mark's Basin, and it has served as the city's main thoroughfare for over a thousand years. Everything — people, goods, garbage, ambulances — moves along it by boat. There isn't a single car, truck, or bicycle on this road. There never has been.

More than 170 buildings line its banks, and the parade of architectural styles reads like a textbook: Byzantine, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, all jumbled together in a way that would be chaotic anywhere else but here feels perfectly composed. The palazzi were built by Venice's merchant aristocracy, each family trying to outdo the next with a more elaborate facade. The canal was their catwalk, and the palaces were their outfits.

The best way to experience it is the Number 1 vaporetto — Venice's waterbus — which makes every stop and takes about 45 minutes to travel the full length. Take it at sunset, when the light turns the water gold and the palazzo facades glow pink and amber. It costs the same as any other vaporetto ride and offers views that rival any paid sightseeing cruise in the world.

Four bridges cross the Grand Canal: the Rialto (1591), the Accademia (1854, rebuilt 1932), the Scalzi (1934), and the controversial Constitution Bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava, completed in 2008 to howls of criticism for its modern design and its slippery glass steps that proved dangerous for pedestrians with wheeled luggage. Until 1854, the Rialto was the only bridge — Venice got by with traghetti, public gondola ferries that still shuttle people across at seven points for a couple of euros.