Instead of Piazza San Marco: the North-East on the water, without overtourism

Those seeking an alternative to Venice and Piazza San Marco usually don't want to give up the water: they want canals, lagoons, reflections and silence. The beauty of it is that the whole North-East, from the Po delta to the Friulian lagoons, is built on water as much as the Serenissima, but without the numbers that today make a day among the alleyways such hard work. Here you'll find the same ingredients, mosaics, abbeys, palaces facing the canals, spread over a territory where you don't have to queue to enter a basilica.

The Po delta

The most logical starting point is the Po delta, where Emilia-Romagna fades into the Adriatic in a maze of brackish lagoons. Comacchio is the most honest "little Venice" there is: thirteen islets, the Trepponti closing off the canals, eels and fishmongers instead of souvenir shop windows. From here boat trips set out towards the fishing huts and the wetlands where pink flamingos nest, a water-borne experience that shares Venice's origin but not its tourist pressure. A little further north, the abbey of Pomposa raises its Romanesque bell tower above the plain: it was the spiritual beacon of the delta when this was a republic of monks and land-reclaimers. A few kilometres away, the Mesola Wood preserves the delta's last lowland forest, with deer that make it a rare oasis among fossil dunes and canals.

Going back up the inland waters you reach Argenta, where the Pieve di San Giorgio and the Museum of Land Reclamation tell a truth we take for granted in Venice: none of this land would exist without a stubborn governance of water. It's the perfect complement to a trip into the delta, and explains why the Po plain is a hydraulic masterpiece as much as a monumental one. Further inland, Ferrara completes the Este circle: the Castle with its water-filled moat and its red-brick courtyards offer the Renaissance town planning you're after, in a city where you get around by bicycle rather than by elbowing your way through.

Friuli on the water

Moving east, Friuli Venezia Giulia has its own lagoon and its own mosaics. Aquileia preserves the largest Early Christian mosaic floor in the West, over 750 square metres uncovered in 1909, walkable on suspended walkways. It was one of the great river ports of the Roman Empire and today is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a few kilometres away Grado, the "golden island" set on the northernmost lagoon of the Adriatic, gives the idea of Venice many have in their heads, without the overcrowding. To stay on the water theme in its purest form, Polcenigo and the Gorgazzo offer a spring of an almost unreal blue at the foot of the pre-Alps, one of the few places where water itself is the monument.

Inland Friuli adds layered history along its rivers. Cividale, suspended over the Natisone with its Devil's Bridge, preserves in the Lombard Temple early-medieval stuccoes that alone are worth the trip, and is part of the UNESCO site on the Lombards. In the same vein there's Sesto al Reghena, an abbey-village grown around an ancient Benedictine foundation among the Friulian fields: twelve centuries of history within a moat. And along the Tagliamento, Venzone is the medieval village rebuilt stone by stone after the 1976 earthquake, today with intact walls and a Gothic cathedral.

For those who want to gain altitude without leaving the water, Sauris sets its wooden houses and its Germanic dialect above a turquoise mountain lake: smoked ham, starry skies and an atmosphere far removed from the lagoon heat. And if you want the reflections of the Veneto hills rather than the sea, the Pieve di San Pietro di Feletto sets a thousand years of frescoes among the Prosecco hills, a UNESCO Heritage Site, half an hour from the beaches but in another world.

An amphibious North-East

The thread that links these places is simple: the North-East is amphibious by nature, and Venice is only its most famous outcome. Building an itinerary on the water among deltas, lagoons and springs means rediscovering canals, mosaics and palaces without the crush of Piazza San Marco, choosing spring or early autumn for good light, flamingos in the wetlands and historic centres all to yourself.

Practical guides for Todi

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