Venice Is Extraordinary. The City 60km Away Has Palladio and Almost No Tourists.
TheVoyageCo asked Daniela for her local insights for Venice and the Veneto. This is what she said.
Vicenza sits 60 kilometres from Venice, takes 30 to 45 minutes by direct train, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site built around the architecture of Andrea Palladio. The Teatro Olimpico is the world's oldest surviving indoor theatre, completed in 1585. Daniela Zarpellon pairs Vicenza with an early-morning Venice day in Cannaregio and Dorsoduro, and recommends bigoli in salsa for one Venetian dinner.
Daniela Zarpellon
I’m a Professional Tour Guide based in the Veneto region, and I help travelers design meaningful journeys through Venice and Northern Italy.I know this region not only through study, but through years of living and working here. From the canals of Venice and its lagoon to historic cities, elegant vi
Daniela Zarpellon has a theory about Venice: the problem is not the city. The problem is the version of it most people see. Venice is genuinely extraordinary, but the version most visitors experience, in peak season, moving between the same ten landmarks in a crowd of thousands, is a particular and diminished version of the real thing. Her recommendation is not to skip Venice, but to approach it differently and to pair it with a city 60 kilometres away that almost nobody visits.
Daniela lives in the Veneto and advises travellers through The Voyage Co.
A Sense of Venice and the Veneto
Daniela begins with the broader region. Venice is one chapter. The Veneto is the book.
Q. How would you describe Venice and the Veneto to a friend?
Venice is genuinely extraordinary, and the Veneto around it is a region that most international visitors never see. The relationship between the two matters: Venice is the most famous Venetian city, but Vicenza, Padua, Verona, Treviso, and the smaller towns in between are part of the same cultural fabric and absorb almost no tourism by comparison.
Q. What do you want people to understand before they arrive?
That Venice is not the only Venetian city. Peak-season Venice is a particular and diminished version of the real thing: enormous crowds, queues for everything, a price structure built for one-day visitors. The fix is not to skip Venice. It is to stay overnight, to leave the lagoon for a day, and to pair the city with the wider region.
Q. And the travellers who do that?
They come back. They tell friends to spend four nights in the Veneto, not two in Venice. They start asking about Vicenza and Padua. They eat in trattorias in residential districts that operate at completely different prices and pace from the restaurants in San Marco. The trip becomes a region trip, not a single-city tick-box.
The problem with Venice is not the city. The problem is the version of it most people see.
Where do locals send friends in the Veneto?
Daniela's answer is one of Italy's least visited UNESCO cities, an hour from Venice by train.
Q. Where would you send a friend who wanted something unexpected in the Veneto?
Vicenza, without hesitation. Vicenza is a city in the Veneto region that is often overlooked by tourists. It is home to a number of works by the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, including the Basilica Palladiana and the Teatro Olimpico, the world's oldest surviving indoor theatre.
Q. How do you get to Vicenza from Venice?
By train is the easiest and most popular option. Fast and regional trains run multiple times per hour between Vicenza and Venezia Santa Lucia. The trip takes between 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the specific train you choose. By car, the distance is roughly 69 kilometres along the motorway and the drive takes about 45 to 55 minutes. The train is the obvious choice for a day trip.
Q. Why is the Teatro Olimpico worth the trip on its own?
Built in 1580, it has never been altered, and the painted trompe-l'oeil perspectives on its stage create the illusion of looking down a long street in ancient Rome. The effect is extraordinary, and because Vicenza draws a fraction of the visitors that Venice does, you can stand there in something close to silence and actually take it in. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which tells you the significance of what is here, even if the tourist infrastructure has not yet caught up.
Q. And what is the Basilica Palladiana?
Palladio's most famous civic building in Vicenza, sitting on Piazza dei Signori in the centre of the city. It is not a church (the name basilica here is in the original Roman sense, meaning a civic hall) and the upper loggia opens onto a green-copper roof and the city's rooftops. The exterior is the photograph; the interior is the surprise. The piazza below has the morning market and the cafés the locals actually use.
The best time to visit Venice to avoid the crowds
Daniela's honest take on when Venice works and when it doesn't.
Q. When is Venice worth it, and when is it not?
Venice can be very crowded, especially during the summer months, and it can feel like you are part of a tourist conveyor belt rather than experiencing the city. The solution is timing: visit in the shoulder months, spring or autumn, when the numbers drop and the city has room to exist.
Q. Does early morning solve it in high season?
It changes everything. Arriving before the day-trippers, walking the calli while the light is still low and the city quiet, is a different experience from arriving at midday. The first vaporetti of the morning, the cafés that open before the tour groups arrive, the bridges without queues. In high season, that early morning window is the version of Venice most worth having.
Q. And the worst weeks if you can avoid them?
Mid-July to mid-August. Carnival in February is also extremely crowded, but in a different way (locals dressed up, festival energy) and you may want that. The peak summer weeks are a denser, hotter version of overcrowding that does not flatter the city. If you can move dates by a few weeks either side, the trip changes.
How to Spend 48 Hours Across Venice and Vicenza
Daniela's two-day structure gives the trip a second chapter and turns it into an actual encounter with the Veneto.
Q. How would you structure 48 hours across Venice and Vicenza?
Spend day one in Venice, beginning at dawn. Wake up early to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canal before the tourists arrive. The city at that hour is as close as most visitors will get to the Venice that Venetians actually know.
Q. What does the rest of day one look like?
After the dawn walk, take a gondola through the smaller canals rather than the Grand Canal itself, which is over-touristed in its standard form. The afternoon should go to the less-visited districts: Cannaregio or Dorsoduro, where the ratio of locals to visitors is more balanced. Dinner cicchetti at a bacaro, then back to the hotel.
Q. And day two?
The second day goes to Vicenza. Take the early train from Santa Lucia, arrive in Vicenza by mid-morning, walk to the Basilica Palladiana and then the Teatro Olimpico. Lunch at a local restaurant on or near Piazza dei Signori. Walk the centre slowly in the early afternoon. Return to Venice in the evening, in time for one more late dinner.
Q. What does this structure give you that two days in Venice alone don't?
It gives the trip a second chapter, and it makes the stay feel like an actual encounter with the Veneto rather than a single landmark processed and photographed. Vicenza in particular shifts how you see Venice when you return: you understand that Venetian architecture, Venetian civic life, and the lagoon city are three different things, all part of the same region.
What to Eat and Drink in Venice and Vicenza
Daniela's food answer is one Venetian dish that exists outside of the cruise-ship menus.
Q. What's a dish that defines Venetian food?
Bigoli in salsa. A traditional Venetian pasta dish made with thick spaghetti and a savoury sauce of onions and anchovies. It is a dish with a long history in Venetian cuisine, originally eaten on fast days when meat was not permitted.
Q. Why does it work so well as a marker of the city?
Because it is exactly the opposite of what most visitors expect Venice to be. The combination of sweet slow-cooked onions and salty anchovy is more subtle than it sounds, and in a good restaurant it arrives looking very plain and tasting very good. It is one of the most honest representations of how the city eats: pasta from the lagoon culture, sauce that costs nothing, made well.
Q. And in Vicenza?
Baccalà alla vicentina, the city's signature dish: salt cod slow-cooked with milk, onions, and anchovies, served traditionally with polenta. It is a heavier dish than bigoli in salsa, and it belongs to Vicenza specifically. Order it in one of the trattorias near Piazza dei Signori, with a glass of one of the local whites. The cooking culture of the Veneto is quietly serious and almost entirely missed by the standard Venice itinerary.
Daniela's Veneto is not the one in the cruise-ship brochure. It is the slower one, the one that opens up when you sleep in Venice instead of day-tripping it, when you take the train to Vicenza, and when you order the dish nobody else at your table has heard of. Two cities, sixty kilometres apart, sharing one region. Spend two days in each version, and the trip becomes a different thing.
Venice and Vicenza FAQ
Explore more Venice-specific insights to plan your next trip with locals.
