Venice

Our tours focus on tangible legacies: guild halls, monastic gardens, centuries-old workshops, and monumental landmarks. You might stand inside a historic gondola boatyard, visit a multi-generational family of glassblowers on Murano, or walk through palazzi usually closed to the public. Our photography tours are led by award-winning professionals who shift your perspective, teaching you to read the city and its people through its light and shadow, and our boat tours guide you into quieter corners of the lagoon, a few of the 60 islands that comprise this ecosystem.

Explore our essential Venice tours below or see all Venice experiences here.

Boat Tours

See Venice from the water with a boatman raised on these waters. Slip through narrow canals when the calli are crowded. Run the open lagoon with a fourth-generation Burano fisherman, featured by National Geographic, to see his fishing grounds, spot birdlife, and forage wild herbs — ending with lunch at a vineyard island or a fishermen's cooperative. At first light, visit San Francesco del Deserto, a monastery island where monks still live. At sunset, trace island silhouettes on a swift run. Water is how the city works; and the only way to truly understand it is to move with its tides.

Culture Tours

Our Culture Tours bring you into Venice’s living rituals and enduring traditions. Meet the people who keep them alive — from mask-makers to costumiers in working ateliers. Prefer play? An art director leads an urban game that lets creativity and perspective set the route. Exchange vows on a gondola with an officiant, music, and professional photography. During Carnevale, join exclusive workshops that preserve centuries-old practices of performance and anonymity.

Local Life Tours

Experience Venice as it’s lived today. Step off the busy routes to visit the Rialto market, family-run bacari, and canals where Venetians move through daily life. Some tours cross the northern or southern lagoon, where small island communities still set the rhythm. Others focus on contemporary culture in the six sestieri — art, food, and the social spaces where locals gather. These tours connect you to Venice’s living neighborhoods and the people who live here.

Photography Tours

In Fernwayer’s photo tours, image-making is the focus — from guided street walks to private portrait sessions. They emphasize composition, light, and technique, showing you how to see and frame the city. No prior skills or expertise required — photography is simply an excellent way to look more closely and notice what most people miss. Each tour traces the play of shadow and reflection across Venice’s canals and bridges, documents its authentic street life, or travels by boat to the lagoon for landscapes few visitors capture. Our photography experiences invite you to be either the subject or the artist: pose for a gilded portrait in historic costume within a private Venetian palace, or learn to work with Venice’s distinctive light on a guided photo walk.