Venice Before Anyone Else Wakes Up

Venice is the most visited city per square metre in Europe, and in daylight hours it can feel like it. The Rialto Bridge, the Piazza San Marco, the Grand Canal vaporetto stops — all of them, from ten in the morning to seven in the evening, are moving walls of cameras and rolling luggage. This is not the city's fault. Venice is so extraordinarily beautiful that you cannot blame the world for wanting to be inside it. The solution is to be there before the world arrives.

Set an alarm for five. Walk out of your hotel into empty calli (alleyways) where the only sound is water lapping against stone and the distant clang of a delivery boat. The fish market at Rialto sets up at four — the vendors are already there, the canal boats unloading ice and crates — and this scene is as old as the city itself. The light at dawn in Venice, when it is misty and the reflections of the palazzos fracture in the canal water, is what Turner was trying to paint for thirty years.

By six thirty, the first tourists from the cruise ships begin arriving. By seven, the transformation is underway. You have roughly ninety minutes of the city at its most miraculous — then breakfast at a counter bar with a macchiato and a brioche among Venetians who live here, who cross the Rialto bridge to work each morning and barely look at it, and who will still be here long after everyone else has left.