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????️ The Top 10 things to do in Venice | WHAT to do in Venice & WHERE to go, by the locals ????????????

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A Venice travel guide skips the gondola touts and heads straight for the flood-proofed bookshop instead.

Withlocals built its countdown video around the parts of Venice that don’t show up on a standard shore-excursion itinerary — a bookstore that keeps its stock in bathtubs, a €2 boat crossing that does the same job as an €80 gondola tour, and a gelato that gets served buried in whipped cream on a promenade most tourists never walk. The guide runs through ten stops, plus a bonus tip, moving from the Rialto Bridge out to the lagoon islands and finishing in the bacari wine bars where residents actually spend their evenings.

• At Libreria Acqua Alta in the Castello district, owner Luigi Frizzo protects his inventory from seasonal flooding by storing books inside full-size gondolas, bathtubs, and waterproof basins.
• The video’s bonus tip flags the traghetto — a gondola-style ferry that crosses the Grand Canal for €2, compared with private gondola tours that run €80 or more.
• The Gianduiotto tasting recommendation points specifically to Gelateria Nico on the Zattere promenade in Dorsoduro, where the chocolate-hazelnut gelato is served in a thick slice submerged in whipped cream.

Beyond Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Crowds

The countdown opens at number 10 with the Rialto Bridge itself, but the advice isn’t to fight the pedestrian crush on top of it — it’s to view the bridge from angles away from the heaviest foot traffic, where the sightlines are just as good without the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. Number 8 applies the same logic to Piazza San Marco, steering visitors across the water to quieter vantage points, including the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, for a view of the square without standing in it.

It’s a theme that runs through the whole list: Venice’s marquee sights are worth seeing, but the locals interviewed for the video treat them as something to observe from a distance rather than stand in line for.

The Bookseller Who Beats the Tide

Number 9 on the countdown is Libreria Acqua Alta, tucked into the Castello district, where Luigi Frizzo has built his shop’s identity around Venice’s recurring high-water problem. When acqua alta floods the calli, Frizzo doesn’t evacuate his stock — he floats it, stacking books into a full-size gondola parked in the middle of the store and stashing more in bathtubs and waterproof basins scattered through the shelves.

A bookstore that stores its inventory in a gondola and a bathtub because the water is going to come in anyway.

It’s the kind of detail that turns a browsing stop into a story worth telling afterward, and it’s exactly the sort of off-the-tourist-map find the video is built to surface.

Lagoon Islands Away from the Cruise Crowds

Numbers 7, 6, and 4 all push outward into the water. The Lido gets its own stop for historic architecture and beaches that stay quiet even in high season, while a boat trip into the Venetian Lagoon uncovers Sant’Erasmo and the old fortress island of Sant’Andrea — spots that don’t turn up on the standard vaporetto routes most first-timers ride. The island-hopping recommendation at number 4 covers more familiar names — Murano for glassblowing, Burano for its lace and its painted fishermen’s houses — but adds Mazzorbo, a smaller, quieter island next door that most day-trippers skip entirely.

Anyone stacking Venice against another Italian coastal stop worth the trip should also check out how Positano stacks up against the hype on the Amalfi Coast.

Gelato, Gondolas, and the €2 Secret

At number 5, the video sends viewers to the Zattere promenade in Dorsoduro for Gianduiotto — a thick slab of chocolate-hazelnut gelato served submerged in whipped cream — specifically naming Gelateria Nico as the source. Number 3 shifts to the gondolas themselves, walking through the squero tradition of building them by hand before pairing that craft explainer with the bonus tip: skip the private gondola tour that can run €80 or more and instead take a traghetto, a shared gondola ferry that crosses the Grand Canal for €2.

It’s the most practical piece of advice in the whole list — the same boat, the same ride across the water, at a fraction of the tourist price.

Eating and Drinking Like a Venetian

The final two stops move the focus to the table. Number 2 recommends a seafood dinner built around fresh catches pulled from the lagoon and the Adriatic, and number 1 — the top of the countdown — is Venetian nightlife itself: the bacari wine bars in Cannaregio and Campo Santa Margherita, where cicchetti small bites and Aperol or Campari spritzes are the currency of a normal evening out, no reservation or tourist menu required.

Anyone comparing notes on other Venice itineraries before booking a trip might also look at this rundown of 15 things to do in Venice from a family-travel angle, since the two guides split the city’s attractions in noticeably different ways — one built for kids in tow, this one built for skipping the line at the Rialto altogether.

The traghetto tip is the one worth actually using on the ground — €2 gets the same crossing, the same gondolier, the same view of the Grand Canal that an €80 private tour sells as an experience, and it’s the detail from this list most likely to save a traveler real money on the next trip to Venice.