Guide to Venice

Venice – From Carlo Scarpa’s quietly radical interventions at Querini Stampalia and the Olivetti showroom to Tadao Ando’s concrete insertions at Palazzo Grassi, this guide maps the layered architectural history of Venice—where Gothic façades, Baroque excess, and contemporary experiments coexist within a city shaped as much by water as by design.

Welcome to Venice, a city so familiar it’s often reduced to its contours—a decorative backdrop rather than a site of forceful architectural intent. But look closer, and you’ll find a city where radical spatial experiments have been hiding in plain sight for centuries.

This guide launches to coincide with the Venice Architecture Biennale—a reminder that this city has always been more experiment than museum, a lab for design amid decay, and a place defined not by preservation, but by continuous rearrangement.