Secret Venice Travel Guide

The Secret Venice guide from French publishers Jonglez has been updated several times, and won an award as Travel Guide of the Year in the USA.

When a book is updated frequently, as this Secret Venice travel guide is (this is the 6th edition), it’s a sign of two things. One is that it clearly sells well and is popular enough for the publishers to keep updating it. The second thing is that it means the publishers are conscientious about keeping the information in the guide current. I know from experience as a guidebook writer myself that not all publishers adopt this attitude and some leave it as long as possible between updates, or simply don’t pay the writers enough, or give them sufficient time, to do a good job.

I’ve been to Venice several times and even written a guide to the city myself, and although that was specifically a food and drink guide it meant that I walked the back streets all over the city. I only wish I’d had this excellent guide with me, although if I had I’d probably never have got my own research done.

The authors spent an incredible five years tracking down its hidden secrets, and while famous places like St Mark’s Basilica and the Doge’s Palace do get mentioned, it’s always with some unexpected story, some unusual spot that’s easily missed. Some of the places covered include Venice’s only underground canal, an underground cemetery, a monastery’s vegetable garden, a market in a women’s prison, a place to play petanque and, yes, those elusive places where you can escape the crowds.

Venice’s Secret Places

I haven’t counted them but there must be several hundred city secrets revealed in the book, which runs to 432 pages. It’s divided geographically into Venice’s seven districts, with an extra chapter on Around the Lagoon. Each section opens with a map spread across two pages, showing you where to find these secret places, and a list below of the entries themselves. Venice being Venice, though, you’d be advised to get a detailed street map as well, or a good map app.

To give an idea of the scale of the book, the San Marco district alone has almost 100 pages. Most entries cover two pages, with a photo on the left, text on the right, but there’s a lot of variety and most of the main entries also tell you about Sights Nearby.

Index

At the back of Secret Venice there’s an index, but not a conventional index. This guide has a Thematic Index, so you can look things up by topic: Architecture, History, Museums, Music, and so on. Needless to say there are a lot of entries under Curiosities!

San Marco

So, just how many secrets can St Mark’s Square have? Actually, the authors have uncovered six of them, with another five in St Mark’s Basilica, and four for the Doge’s Palace. These include the Mosaic of the Dodecahedron, on the floor of St Mark’s Basilica, another mosaic there of a rhinoceros, and the answer to the question of why two of the columns in the Doge’s Palace are pink.

The Underground Cemetery

Of course the graves in cemeteries are mostly underground, but not usually the cemetery itself. The one that is can be found at the church of San Simeon Piccolo in Santa Croce. It isn’t normally open to visitors but the authors suggest that if you attend Sunday mass and hang around afterwards, one of the attendants might help. As an aside, this church also has the lowest bell-tower in Venice.

We could go on and on listing some of the highlights, but if you love Venice (and who doesn’t?) you’ll want to buy this book and discover them for yourself. We’ve yet to read a Jonglez travel guide that isn’t good, but this has to be one of the best yet as Venice must have more fascinating secrets than cities twice its size.