Venice Canal Cruise: 2-Hour Grand Canal and Secret Canals Semi-Private tour

Meet your guide in central Venice, near St Mark’s Square, and step aboard your motorboat for a 2-hour tour of the canals. While cruising away from the busy city centre, exploring the lesser-visited canals, look out for the Cattedral di San Pietro di Castello. Hear how the sleepy-looking place of worship served as Venice’s primary cathedral for centuries before Mark’s Basilica was ‘promoted’ from humble chapel status.

Pass alongside more quieter canals, seeing streets lined with drying laundry (a quintessential Venice sight), and enter the Porta dell’Acqua city gates into the impressive Arsenale, Venice’s historical shipyard and naval depot. Built at the start of the 12th century, the Arsenale grew to be one of Europe’s greatest shipyards, producing naval and merchant ships on a mass scale.

Relax as you cruise out of the old shipyard to the Cannaregio neighborhood, where some of the city’s most charming canals are found. Work your way around the quieter waterways, seeing romantic canalside restaurants and bars, and then head into the picturesque area known as the Jewish Ghetto. Enjoy a break of roughly 15-20 minutes to walk about and take photos of the pretty streets, and then continue by boat along the backwater canals of Santa Croce and Dorsoduro.

Loop past one of Dorsoduro’s gondola workshops to see craftsmen at work producing traditional Venetian gondolas, and then cruise down the famous Grand Canal. Have your camera ready to capture sights of the Baroque mansions and churches that line the busy stretch of water, and gaze at the thoroughfare of passing gondolas, vaporetto (water buses) and water taxis — all jostling for space on the water.

Cruise beneath Venice’s iconic Rialto Bridge, and return to the start point near St Mark’s Square where your cruise finishes.