The Most Beautiful Places in Veneto
29 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Veneto are Grand Canal, Lake Sorapiss and Scrovegni Chapel. The list covers 29 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Veneto runs from the peaks of the Dolomites down to the shore of Lake Garda, across a fertile plain and out to the lagoon of Venice. For about a thousand years the Venetian Republic ruled here, growing rich on trade with Byzantium and the East, and that wealth shaped everything from the gilded churches of the lagoon to the country villas of the mainland, where Andrea Palladio set an architectural language later copied across Europe and America. Older layers survive too, above all in Roman Verona.
Venice supplies most of the list. The Doge's Palace wraps its Gothic arcades in pink and white patterned stone, and the Bridge of Sighs links it to the prisons across the canal. Next door, St Mark's Basilica glows with acres of gold mosaic, while the clocktower on the square has bronze figures striking the hours above a blue and gold zodiac dial. The Rialto Bridge spans the Grand Canal in a single stone arch, Tintoretto covered the walls and ceilings of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and the island of San Michele serves as the city's walled cemetery, the resting place of Stravinsky and Diaghilev.
On the mainland, Palladio's Villa La Rotonda near Vicenza presents an identical temple portico on each of its four sides. Verona's Roman arena, among the best preserved anywhere, still hosts summer opera, and the sanctuary of Madonna della Corona clings to a sheer cliff high above the Adige valley.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grand Canal | Canal | |
| 2 | Lake Sorapiss | Lake | |
| 3 | Scrovegni Chapel | Church building | |
| 4 | Burano | Most beautiful village | |
| 5 | Madonna della Corona Sanctuary (Spiazzi) | Pilgrimage site | |
| 6 | St Mark's Basilica | Cathedral | |
| 7 | Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene | Vineyard landscape | |
| 8 | Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotonda) | Manor house | ✓ |
| 9 | Lake Garda | Lake | |
| 10 | St Mark's Campanile | Bell tower | |
| 11 | Doge's Palace | Palace | |
| 12 | Rialto Bridge | Bridge | |
| 13 | St Mark's Clocktower | Clock tower | |
| 14 | Verona Arena | Amphitheatre | |
| 15 | Bridge of Sighs | Covered bridge | |
| 16 | Scuola Grande di San Rocco | Museum | |
| 17 | San Michele Cemetery, Venice | Cemetery | |
| 18 | Vajont Dam | Dam | |
| 19 | Teatro La Fenice | Theatre building | |
| 20 | Ponte Vecchio, Bassano | Covered bridge | |
| 21 | Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua | Pilgrimage site | |
| 22 | Scala Contarini del Bovolo | Stairs | |
| 23 | Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari | Church building | |
| 24 | Santa Maria della Salute | Church building | |
| 25 | Villa Barbaro | Manor house | |
| 26 | Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza | Theatre building | |
| 27 | Malcesine–Monte Baldo Cable Car | Aerial tramway | |
| 28 | Brion tomb | Mausoleum | |
| 29 | Torcello Cathedral | Cathedral |
01 Grand Canal
Canal Grande
Italy · 0.8 km from Venice45.442° N 12.326° E
Image by garten-gg from Pixabay It isn't really a canal — it's a river Venice never had to dig. The Grand Canal follows the bed of what was once a channel carrying mainland water into the lagoon, and the city grew up along its curve rather than cutting it through solid ground.
Did you know? The present stone Rialto Bridge, built 1588–1591 by Antonio da Ponte, spans the canal in a single arch of about 31.8 metres.
02 Lake Sorapiss
Lago di Sorapiss
Italy46.520° N 12.224° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay Lago di Sorapiss is a small lake with an improbable colour, set in a stone amphitheatre of the Dolomites above Cortina d'Ampezzo. At about 1,925 metres, under the north faces of the Sorapiss group, it is fed by meltwater from the little Sorapiss glacier, and that water carries a fine powder of ground dolomite rock.
Did you know? The present stone hut was completed on 18 September 1966 and named after Alfonso Vandelli, a noted climber who died about a year before it opened.
03 Scrovegni Chapel
Cappella degli Scrovegni
Italy · 34.3 km from Venice45.412° N 11.880° E
Andrea Piroddi · CC BY-SA 3.0 Behind a plain brick exterior in Padua lies one of the turning points of European painting. Every wall of the Scrovegni Chapel is covered by Giotto's frescoes, completed around 1305, and under a barrel vault painted deep blue and scattered with stars the whole space reads as a single, continuous story.
Did you know? Pope Benedict XI granted an indulgence to visitors of the chapel on 1 March 1304, while the frescoes were still under way.
04 Burano
Italy · 8.3 km from Venice45.486° N 12.418° E
Image by rperucho from Pixabay Burano's houses are painted in one of a fixed set of colours, and if you want to repaint yours, the island's tradition — enforced today with real bureaucratic teeth — requires you to request permission and match a shade already assigned to your specific plot of land.
Did you know? According to legend, Burano lace began when a fisherman who resisted the sirens' song was given a veil of sea foam for his bride.
05 Madonna della Corona Sanctuary (Spiazzi)
Santuario della Madonna della Corona
Italy · 25.5 km from Verona45.650° N 10.856° E
Misasar · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Crown, the Madonna della Corona, seems to hang in mid-air.
Did you know? The oldest image venerated here is a 13th-century fresco of the Madonna and Child, older than the famous stone Pietà.
06 St Mark's Basilica
Basilica di San Marco
Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.340° E
Image by NakNakNak from Pixabay St Mark's is not a cathedral that grew out of a bishop's church; it was the private chapel of the Doge and the state sanctuary of the Venetian Republic, and it became the city's cathedral only in 1807.
Did you know? Napoleon carried the horses off to Paris in 1797 and set them on the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel; they came back to Venice in 1815.
07 Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene
Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Valdobbiadene
Italy · 31.5 km from Treviso45.953° N 12.226° E
Image by Francesco_Foti from Pixabay Between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, at the foot of the Venetian Prealps north of Treviso, the land rises into a strange, rhythmic relief: long, steep, narrow ridges running side by side like the backs of animals, separated by small tight valleys.
Did you know? Prosecco takes its name from a village near Trieste, far to the east; in 2009 the grape itself was renamed Glera to keep the place name for the wine.
08 Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotonda)
Italy45.532° N 11.560° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Quinok · CC BY-SA 4.0 La Rotonda is the villa that taught the world what a country house could look like. Andrea Palladio designed it for Paolo Almerico, a cleric who retired from the papal court in 1565 and wanted a house on a hill just outside his native Vicenza.
Did you know? The villa took nearly four decades to finish: begun in 1567, it was completed only in 1605.
09 Lake Garda
Lago di Garda
Italy · 33.1 km from Verona45.633° N 10.667° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay Lake Garda is the largest lake in Italy and the most varied of the great Alpine lakes. Its shape explains its character: in the north it is a narrow fjord of deep water squeezed between steep mountains, while in the south it opens into a broad basin fringed by gentle morainic hills, vineyards and olive groves.
10 St Mark's Campanile
Campanile di San Marco
Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.339° E
Image by hadzaj from Pixabay 6 metres, the tallest structure in Venice, and Venetians call it the master of the house. It began as a watchtower and a sea-mark in the tenth century, raised in stages by successive doges to guard the harbour entrance and guide ships home.
11 Doge's Palace
Palazzo Ducale
Italy · 0.7 km from Venice45.434° N 12.340° E
Image by 495756 from Pixabay Seen from the lagoon, the Doge's Palace does something no textbook building should: its heavy, nearly solid upper storey sits on two tiers of delicate Gothic arcades, as if the palace were balanced on lace. That inversion is the signature of Venetian Gothic, and this is its grandest example.
Did you know? The enclosed Bridge of Sighs actually holds two separate corridors running side by side, each linking the prisons to different courts and offices.
12 Rialto Bridge
Ponte di Rialto
Italy · 0.1 km from Venice45.438° N 12.336° E
Image by huebistar from Pixabay The Rialto Bridge crosses the Grand Canal in a single stone arch, with a covered arcade at its crown and rows of shops climbing both ramps: a bridge that is also a street.
Did you know? Inscriptions on the flanks record that it was completed under Doge Pasquale Cicogna in 1591, counted as 1,170 years after the city's legendary founding in 421.
13 St Mark's Clocktower
Torre dell'orologio
Italy · 0.5 km from Venice45.435° N 12.339° E
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Clock Tower on the north side of Piazza San Marco in Venice is a Renaissance showpiece built both to tell the time and to proclaim the wealth of the Republic: it was set where its great dial could be seen from the lagoon.
Did you know? The bell they strike is signed by its founder, Simeone Campanato, and is one of the original fittings of the 1490s.
14 Verona Arena
Arena di Verona
Italy · 0.4 km from Verona45.439° N 10.994° E
Claconvr · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Arena rises out of Piazza Bra like a piece of geology rather than architecture: an oval of pinkish-red limestone quarried in the Valpolicella hills north of the city, laid in bands with courses of river pebbles and thin rows of dark red brick.
Did you know? Pliny the Younger wrote to a friend who staged games in Verona in memory of his wife, regretting that the African panthers he had bought were held up by storms.
15 Bridge of Sighs
Ponte dei Sospiri
Italy · 0.7 km from Venice45.434° N 12.341° E
Image by nicolaluisa from Pixabay The name is younger than the bridge, and it was invented by a foreigner who never saw it used for its actual purpose.
Did you know? Between the windows sits the coat of arms of Doge Marino Grimani, crowned by an allegorical figure of Justice.
16 Scuola Grande di San Rocco
Italy · 0.8 km from Venice45.437° N 12.325° E
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 Few rooms anywhere are so completely the work of one painter. On the upper floor of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, walls and ceiling are covered edge to edge with dark, glinting canvases by Jacopo Tintoretto, figures twisting out of shadow into sudden light, while carved wooden panels run along the lower walls.
Did you know? Among the 17th-century woodcarvings along the upper hall’s walls is a figure of Tintoretto himself holding his paintbrushes.
17 San Michele Cemetery, Venice
San Michele
Italy · 1.3 km from Venice45.447° N 12.347° E
Image by NakNakNak from Pixabay Seen from the northern waterfront of Venice, San Michele is a low rectangle of pale brick walls with the dark spires of cypresses rising above them: an island given over entirely to the dead.
Did you know? Carl Filtsch, one of Chopin's most gifted pupils, died here aged just 15 in 1845 and lies in the cemetery.
18 Vajont Dam
Diga del Vajont
Italy46.267° N 12.329° E
Davide Mauro · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Vajont Dam closes a deep, narrow gorge under Monte Toc in the Carnic Prealps, about 100 km north of Venice. It is a double-arch concrete dam 262 m high, among the tallest dams in the world, built between 1957 and 1960 by the Società Adriatica di Elettricità to the design of the engineer Carlo Semenza.
19 Teatro La Fenice
Gran Teatro La Fenice
Italy · 0.6 km from Venice45.434° N 12.334° E
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 Few opera houses carry their history in their name as literally as La Fenice — the Phoenix — in Venice. It was built after its owners lost the city's leading theatre, the San Benedetto, in a legal dispute, and they named the new house after the bird that rises from its own ashes.
Did you know? The original house went up in about 18 months, from June 1790 to its opening in May 1792.
20 Ponte Vecchio, Bassano
Ponte Vecchio
Italy45.768° N 11.731° E
Image by NakNakNak from Pixabay The Ponte Vecchio of Bassano del Grappa is a covered wooden bridge over the Brenta designed by Andrea Palladio, and unlike his villas and churches it is built entirely of timber.
21 Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua
Basilica di Sant'Antonio di Padova
Italy · 34.3 km from Venice45.401° N 11.881° E
Image by sferrario1968 from Pixabay Padua calls it simply "il Santo", and the basilica built over the tomb of St Anthony is one of the great pilgrimage churches of Europe.
22 Scala Contarini del Bovolo
Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo
Italy · 0.4 km from Venice45.435° N 12.335° E
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 Venice has grander staircases hidden behind palace doors, but none that turns itself inside out the way this one does.
Did you know? In 1803 the palace was let to Arnoldo Marseille, who ran it as a hotel.
23 Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
Italy · 0.7 km from Venice45.437° N 12.326° E
Falk2 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Behind a plain brick front in the San Polo district of Venice hides one of the richest interiors in Italy.
Did you know? Canova's marble pyramid tomb was first designed for Titian and later built by his pupils to honour Canova himself.
24 Santa Maria della Salute
Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute
Italy · 0.9 km from Venice45.431° N 12.335° E
Image by EdiHoch from Pixabay No building defines the Venetian skyline more than the great white dome at the mouth of the Grand Canal.
Did you know? The octagonal plan was meant to recall the eight-pointed star that symbolises the Virgin Mary.
25 Villa Barbaro
Italy · 25.9 km from Treviso45.812° N 11.976° E
Marcok / it.wikipedia.org · Public domain At the foot of the hills at Maser, Villa Barbaro spreads in a long, symmetrical line across the slope: a central block fronted by four Ionic columns and a temple pediment, flanked by arcaded wings that end in pavilions bearing large sundials.
Did you know? One of the frescoed rooms is dedicated to Bacchus and shows scenes of winemaking, a nod to the villa's role as a working farm estate.
26 Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza
Teatro Olimpico
Italy45.550° N 11.549° E
Didier Descouens · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza is the last design of Andrea Palladio and one of only three Renaissance theatres to survive, together with those of Sabbioneta and Parma. It was commissioned in 1580 by the Accademia Olimpica, the city's society of scholars and gentlemen, of which Palladio was himself a member.
Did you know? Because the old fortress was wide and shallow, Palladio flattened the Roman semicircle of seats into an ellipse.
27 Malcesine–Monte Baldo Cable Car
Funivia Malcesine-Monte Baldo
Italy · 38.7 km from Verona45.766° N 10.813° E
Wittylama · CC BY-SA 4.0 From the harbour of Malcesine, on the eastern shore of Lake Garda, a cable car climbs almost straight up the flank of Monte Baldo, the long limestone ridge that walls in the lake on the Veneto side.
Did you know? The cableway was rebuilt by Hölzl, a lift manufacturer based in Lana in South Tyrol.
28 Brion tomb
Memoriale Brion
Italy · 27 km from Treviso45.751° N 11.913° E
Filippo Poli · CC BY-SA 4.0 At the edge of a village cemetery in the Veneto countryside, Carlo Scarpa built a garden for the dead that has become one of the most admired works of twentieth-century architecture.
Did you know? The underside of the arcosolium is lined with blue and green glass tiles laid over a layer of gold leaf.
29 Torcello Cathedral
Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta
Italy · 9.3 km from Venice45.498° N 12.419° E
Emmanuel Cruvelier · Public domain On a near-empty island in the northern Venetian lagoon stands the oldest building in the Venice area: the former cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta at Torcello.
Did you know? Some windows are closed not with wooden shutters but with heavy slabs of stone.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Veneto?
- On our list, Grand Canal ranks first, followed by Lake Sorapiss and Scrovegni Chapel.
- How was Venice built on water?
- Its buildings rest on wooden piles driven deep into the mud and clay of the lagoon, topped with platforms of timber and stone. Kept underwater and away from oxygen, the wood resists rot and has supported the city for centuries.
- Who designed Villa La Rotonda?
- Andrea Palladio designed it in the 1560s for the cleric Paolo Almerico on a hilltop outside Vicenza. It was finished after Palladio's death by Vincenzo Scamozzi and became one of the most imitated houses in Western architecture.
- Why is it called the Bridge of Sighs?
- The enclosed bridge led prisoners from interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace to the prisons across the canal. The name, popularised in the 19th century, imagines them sighing at their last view of Venice through its small stone windows.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Veneto?
- In our collection, the places in Veneto are most often churches (4), lakes (2), cathedrals (2) and pilgrimage sites (2).
- How many places are on this list in Veneto?
- The list covers 29 places.