The best things to do in Venice with children

Venice with kids is “a different thing from Venice with adults,” writes Wendy Holden at the Daily Mail. “By this I don’t mean that museums, art galleries and serious sightseeing are ruled out -- rather, they are ruled in.” Her children, “who have been much immersed in Oliver Twist recently, initially thought the Doge’s Palace, the vast pink Gothic cake of a building in St Mark’s Square, was called the Dodger’s Palace,” she continues. “We also managed the artcrammed church of the Frari – the sculptor Canova’s spectacularly gloomy tomb with the spooky half-open door was the big hit,” and “Ca’ Pesaro has an excellent collection, as does, of course, the very well known Guggenheim.” Then there is Palazzo Mocenigo, where Byron once kept a zoo on the ground floor, which now houses lavish Venetian costumes; and the Museo di Storia Naturale, the natural history museum with its sea monsters and dinosaurs; the Museo Storico Navale, jam-packed with golden barges and model warships; and the endlessly interesting Biennale. “No matter. Free, off-the-cuff entertainment was available daily.”  

And here are 29 excellent family-friendly Venetian highlights from DreamDiscoverItalia, including visiting a traditional remer (oarlock maker), making Murano glass beads, cruising the Grand Canal on a vaporetto and taking a Venetian ghost tour. The only thing she doesn’t recommend are feeding the pigeons in St Mark’s Square -- “it’s illegal anyway” because their droppings corrode the Venetian stonework -- and swimming in the canals (“there’s always someone who does it every year, but Venice’s canals are neither swimming pools nor baths”).