Venice is famous for its palace-lined canals, old-school gondola rides, and iconic landmarks dating back a millennium, but it has also come to be associated with something a lot less desirable: overtourism.
As a reporter who covers overtourism — and someone who prefers to travel off the beaten path — I was well aware of the problems facing Venice when I decided to visit.
The Italian city draws an estimated 20 million visitors each year, with the vast majority sweeping in just for the day to catch a selfie with the Bridge of Sighs and then bounce. Venice has taken steps to counter the impacts of overtourism, including enacting a fee of about $5 for day trippers during the busy season and limiting cruise ship arrivals. But it’s an ongoing problem for the historic city.
Although I had heard the horror stories of huge crowds making it difficult just to walk over its iconic bridges, I was determined to avoid the same fate. And while there were still plenty of tourists when I visited in late March, I was pleasantly surprised to find it was nothing like what I had feared, and I mostly managed to avoid the hordes of tourists.
Here are three things I did that made a huge difference.
Go in the offseason
You know all those shots you’ve seen of massive crowds near Venice’s Rialto Bridge or St. Mark’s Basilica? They all have something in common: they were taken during the busy season.
For Venice, that’s generally considered April through October, with each month drawing well over half a million visitors in 2023, according to data from the city. July, the busiest month, and August both drew more than 600,000 visitors. November to March, in contrast, is considered the “slow” season, drawing less than 400,000 visitors a month in 2023.
Sustainable tourism experts have previously told me that a key driver of overtourism is not the total visitor numbers but that people often want to visit the exact same places at the same time.
That was evident as I traveled through Venice, experiencing a fraction of the crowd sizes that I had braced myself for.
I visited a TikTok-famous bookstore that online reviewers said they waited an hour to get into and that there was not enough crowd control. But when I got there I simply wandered in, looked at the books, noticed some tourists taking selfies, and then moved on.
I got a last-minute lunch reservation at a beloved local restaurant that some travelers online said I should book well in advance. Instead, I booked the day before and there were several time slots available. There were also last-minute timed entry slots available for main attractions like Doge’s Palace and Gallerie dell’Accademia.
And we walked right into Caffe Florian, which claims to be the oldest coffeehouse in Italy that dates back to the 1700s and sits right on St. Mark’s Square. Folks online said there was a long wait to sit and the coffee was overpriced — it’s the kind of touristy thing I would normally avoid. But when we walked by and saw there was plenty of open seating, inside and outside, we walked right in, sat down, and enjoyed a fancy coffee in a gorgeous, old-school café without any of the crowd-induced chaos I had been warned about.
This happened time and time again in Venice.
Restaurants right along the Grand Canal in the most touristy areas seemed to always have seats available. The longest line I saw was probably for a gelato shop that’s beloved on TikTok, Suso, and even that looked to be about a 10-minute wait.
The offseason months may not have the best weather, but visiting during a shoulder season month like March felt like the best of both worlds. It was warm enough but not hot, requiring only a jacket and sometimes not even needing it, and we only experienced a little bit of drizzling rain. Personally, I would take that weather any day over the sweltering heat of July.
Stay in a residential neighborhood and let yourself wander
Though Venice is made up of over a hundred islands, the main island, or historic center, is about 2 square miles, so it’s not exactly big enough to totally escape the tourists, which I’ve personally found to be a lot easier in big, sprawling cities like Rome or Paris.
But choosing to stay out of the most touristy neighborhoods goes a long way in insulating you from the crowds. San Marco is the most popular neighborhood for tourists to stay in Venice, and it has the souvenir shops to prove it.
Instead of choosing somewhere closer to the main sites, I decided to stay in Cannaregio, one of the most residential districts of Venice’s historic center, which only has about 50,000 permanent residents.
Cannaregio was a lot quieter and had a more authentic feel than the more popular areas of Venice, but it was still not too far to walk to the main sites. The district had a seemingly endless number of quiet paths and canals to explore, allowing us to take in the beauty of Venice without another soul in sight. We visited restaurants and bars that were full of locals, as well as tourists. We saw groups of local preteens sitting on the canals and small kids in soccer uniforms walking home with their parents.
I was genuinely and pleasantly surprised to see real glimpses of local life so close to the overly touristy areas.
Visit another island
We had about four days to explore Venice, a city where most people don’t even spend the night, and those who do spend an average of just over two, according to city data. But staying longer encouraged us to venture even further out of the historic center.
We took a ferry — basically, Venice’s equivalent of a public bus — to Murano, a small island that is famous for its glassmaking and that essentially feels like a quieter and smaller version of the main island.
Even though it was only about 10 minutes by boat from the historic center, Murano was much quieter than Venice, making it even easier to wander without having to worry about overcrowding. It felt almost like a little getaway from the hustle and bustle of the main island, and sipping Aperol on the canal was just so much chiller than a comparable experience in the historic center.
There are other more remote islands you can visit via the public water buses, like Burano, a tiny fishing village with rows of colorful homes, and Torcello, the historic island where Venice began with only a handful of residents left.
Manage your expectations
Venice surpassed my expectations and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I anticipated. If you travel to Venice expecting to find quaint images of authentic, untouched, historic Venetian and Italian life, you may be disappointed.
But you’ll likely see why it draws so many people from all over the world in the first place if you can manage your expectations, take some of these tips, and keep in mind you are visiting a place for which tourism has been a significant part of its economy since the end of the 18th century.
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