Alternatives to Venice: cities and villages on the water, far from the crowds

Looking for an alternative to Venice doesn't mean giving up the canals, the stone bridges or the smell of the lagoon: it means finding them again where tourist pressure hasn't yet emptied the houses and inflated the prices. Italy's North-East grew up around water long before the Serenissima, and much of that civilisation survives in cities and villages reachable by train or a few hours' drive from Mestre. Here are ten stops across Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Emilia-Romagna, designed for those who want lagoon charm without the queue on the Rialto Bridge.

The origins

We start at the origin. Before Venice existed, the Roman port of the upper Adriatic was Aquileia: today it is an archaeological site where you walk over 760 metres of early Christian mosaics, the largest mosaic floor in the West. It's worth reading Aquileia and its sea of mosaics: from here, when the barbarians came, the refugees departed who founded Grado and then the Venetian lagoon. A few kilometres away, Grado and Caorle preserve fishermen's lagoon centres you no longer find in Venice; they aren't in our catalogue, but they're worth the detour.

Friuli

Heading up into Friuli, the water changes face. At Polcenigo and the Gorgazzo an emerald-coloured spring gushes at the foot of the Pre-Alps: it's the exact reverse of the lagoon, fresh clear water instead of brackish water, and around it a village you can walk in half a day. Further east, Cividale del Friuli is mirrored in the Natisone from the Devil's Bridge and guards the Tempietto Longobardo, one of the early-medieval masterpieces of Europe. And if you seek the silence of an abbey-village crossed by a river, Sesto al Reghena revolves around the abbey of Santa Maria in Sylvis, among moats and waters that once fed the Benedictine monks. For those who love the mountains, Venzone — rebuilt stone by stone after the 1976 earthquake — is proof that a walled village can be reborn without becoming a theme park.

The Po Delta

The chapter most like Venice, however, is written by the Po Delta, in Emilia-Romagna. Comacchio, built on thirteen little islands, is the "little Venice" par excellence: the monumental seventeenth-century Trepponti links five canals in a single view, and the batane glide where gondolas would pass in Venice, but with a fraction of the visitors. Comacchio isn't on our site, but its surroundings are: the Abbey of Pomposa, with its Romanesque bell tower watching over the delta, and the Bosco della Mesola, the last lowland forest of the delta, home to wild deer. A little further inland, Argenta tells how water shaped the plain: the Pieve di San Giorgio, the Land Reclamation Museum and the wetlands explain a landscape built entirely by wresting land from the water, exactly as Venice did.

Cities of art

If instead you prefer a city of art with the breath of Venice but with free streets, Ferrara is the most elegant choice: the Renaissance capital of the Este family, it has a castle surrounded by the water of its moat and red-brick courtyards you cross in silence. Bologna, too, hides its watery soul: the Ghetto and the Pescherie Vecchie preserve the city's narrowest alleys, the legacy of a network of canals largely covered but still visible from the famous little window on Via Piella. And for a village where the street itself becomes architecture, the Via degli Asini in Brisighella is a raised gallery carved inside the houses: no canals, but the same logic of a settlement that defends and reinvents itself.

A practical note. These destinations are at their best outside the peak months: between April and June, and again in September-October, the light over the delta is soft, the wetland mosquitoes are manageable and the cities stay mild but empty. Many are connected by train (Aquileia by bus from Cervignano, Ferrara and Bologna on the Bologna-Venice line, Comacchio by bus from the Delta), so you can leave the car behind and move as you should in a land of water. Finally, for those staying in Veneto, Chioggia and Treviso — with its Buranelli quarter — offer real canals a handful of stops from Venice, but with everyday life still going on inside them.

The alternative to Venice, in short, is not a fallback: it's discovering that the lagoon is only the last chapter of a two-thousand-year story of water, and that the rest is visited far more gladly.

Practical guides for Treviso

• Where to stay in Treviso
• What to see in Treviso in 2 days
• Where to eat in Treviso
• How to get to Treviso