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What to Buy and Where to Shop in Venice The Best Shopping Experiences, Crafts and Markets in the City

What to Buy and Where to Shop in Venice

The Best Shopping Experiences, Crafts and Markets in the City

Murano glass is the most famous and celebrated of all Venetian craft traditions, a glassblowing art that has been practiced on the island of Murano since the late 13th century, when the Venetian Republic relocated all glassmakers to the island to reduce the risk of fire in the city. Today Murano is home to dozens of working glass furnaces and showrooms, producing everything from intricate chandeliers and decorative vases to jewelry, tableware, and sculpture. Buying Murano glass directly from the island workshops is the most authentic and rewarding experience, allowing you to watch the glass being blown and shaped before purchasing directly from the artists who made it. Always look for the Vetro Artistico Murano trademark, which guarantees genuine island provenance.

The island of Burano, famous for its brilliantly colorful painted houses and its fishing community, is also the home of one of the finest and most historically significant lacemaking traditions in the world. Venetian needle lace, known as punto in aria, was for centuries the most prized luxury textile in Europe, adorning the collars and cuffs of kings, queens, and popes. Today authentic handmade Burano lace is rare and expensive, a reflection of the extraordinary skill and time required to produce it, and buying a piece directly from one of the island's remaining lacemakers is both a genuine luxury and a meaningful connection to one of Venice's greatest artistic traditions. The island's Museo del Merletto is also an excellent resource for understanding the tradition before you shop.

Venice has a long and extraordinary tradition of textile production, and one of the most celebrated surviving expressions of this heritage is the Fortuny fabric, produced by the house founded by the Spanish-born polymath Mariano Fortuny in the early 20th century. Fortuny's distinctive pleated silk garments and his richly patterned printed velvets and silks, inspired by Renaissance and Byzantine textile traditions, are among the most beautiful and technically remarkable fabrics in the world and are still produced in Venice today. The Fortuny showroom on the Giudecca island is the best place to see and buy these extraordinary textiles, while several other Venetian fabric shops in the city center offer beautiful locally produced silks, velvets, and woven goods.

The Venetian Carnival mask is one of the most iconic and recognizable symbols of the city, and the craft of making them by hand, painting and decorating them with extraordinary skill and artistry, is a tradition that dates back to the height of the Venetian Republic. The finest mask workshops in Venice produce objects of genuine beauty and cultural significance, hand-crafted from papier-mâché or leather and painted with gold leaf, feathers, and intricate decorative motifs. The best places to buy authentic handmade masks are the small ateliers and workshops scattered through the streets of San Polo, Dorsoduro, and Cannaregio, where you can often watch the masks being made before you buy. Avoid the mass-produced plastic and ceramic masks sold in tourist shops near the main sights.

The Rialto market, one of the oldest and most atmospheric markets in Europe, is the best place in Venice to shop for fresh Venetian produce, seasonal fish and seafood, and a wonderful variety of local food specialties. The fish market, or pescheria, on the Grand Canal is a spectacular sight in the early morning, when the stalls are piled high with the extraordinary variety of creatures drawn from the Adriatic and the lagoon, many of which are unknown outside of the Venice area. The adjacent fruit and vegetable market is equally rewarding, with seasonal produce of exceptional quality from the lagoon islands and the Veneto countryside. The market is at its best on weekday mornings and closes by lunchtime.

 Calle Prima de la Donzella, 306, 30125 Venezia VE, Italy

Venice has a wonderful tradition of artisan bookbinding and stationery, and several excellent workshops in the city still produce hand-bound books, journals, leather-covered albums, and beautifully made writing accessories using traditional techniques. The combination of the marbled paper tradition and the bookbinding craft has produced some of the most beautiful and distinctive stationery objects in Italy, and bringing home a hand-bound Venetian journal or a leather-covered address book is one of the most thoughtful and culturally meaningful souvenirs the city has to offer. The Dorsoduro sestiere and the streets around the Accademia bridge are particularly good areas for finding quality bookbinding and stationery shops.

Venice has a long tradition of fine jewellery making, and the city's jewellers offer a range of pieces that reflect both the classical elegance of the Venetian goldsmithing tradition and more contemporary design sensibilities. The Rialto Bridge area and the Mercerie shopping street between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto are lined with jewellery shops offering everything from traditional Venetian gold and silver work to pieces incorporating Murano glass beads and other distinctly local materials. Several excellent independent jewellers in the quieter sestieri offer more original and artisan pieces for those willing to explore beyond the main shopping streets.

Marbled paper, or carta marmorizzata, is one of Venice's most distinctive and beautiful craft traditions, a technique of creating swirling, painterly patterns on paper by floating pigments on a water surface and carefully laying paper onto the design. The tradition arrived in Venice from the East along the trade routes of the Silk Road and became one of the most sought-after luxury goods of the Venetian Republic. Today several excellent paper ateliers in Venice still produce marbled paper using traditional techniques, selling it as writing paper, notebooks, photograph albums, and decorative objects. The Mercerie area between Piazza San Marco and the Rialto, and the streets of the Dorsoduro sestiere, are particularly good areas to find quality paper shops.

Marbled paper https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/8946989275/

For luxury fashion and international designer shopping, the Calle Larga XXII Marzo and the streets surrounding the Piazza San Marco form the most concentrated luxury retail area in Venice, with boutiques from many of Italy's and the world's most celebrated fashion houses. The Mercerie, the series of shopping streets connecting Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge, offers a more varied mix of fashion, accessories, and gifts at different price points. The Frezzeria and the Calle dei Fabbri are also worth exploring for a range of Italian and international brands alongside local Venetian shops.

Calle Larga XXII Marzo, San Marco, Venice, Italy

Venice has a fine tradition of leather craftsmanship, and several excellent artisan leather workshops in the city produce handmade bags, wallets, belts, shoes, and accessories of exceptional quality and beauty. The best artisan leather shops are found in the quieter streets away from the main tourist areas, particularly in the San Polo and Dorsoduro sestieri, where small workshops often sell directly to customers and can produce bespoke items to order. Venetian leather goods make for some of the finest and most practical souvenirs the city has to offer, combining genuine Italian craftsmanship with a distinctly local character.

The Drogheria Mascari near the Rialto market in San Polo is one of the most beautiful and beloved traditional food shops in Venice, a wonderfully atmospheric store that has been selling spices, dried fruits, nuts, chocolates, wines, and specialty foods from around the world since 1948. The shop's extraordinary window displays, crammed with colorful sacks and jars of spices, dried mushrooms, candied fruits, and exotic ingredients, are a spectacle in themselves, and stepping inside to browse the shelves and inhale the extraordinary aromas is one of the most sensory and enjoyable shopping experiences in the city. An excellent destination for edible souvenirs of exceptional quality.

12. Venetian Gondola Accessories and Maritime Objects

For something truly distinctive and uniquely Venetian, the workshops that produce the accessories and fittings for the city's famous gondolas offer some of the most extraordinary and characterful objects in Venice. The forcola, the elaborately carved wooden oarlock that is one of the most beautiful functional objects in Italian craft, is produced by specialist workshops known as remèri, and buying a small forcola as a decorative object or a piece of craft art is one of the most original and genuinely Venetian purchases you can make. Several shops around the city also sell maritime prints, antique maps, and nautical objects that reflect Venice's extraordinary seafaring heritage.

Shopping in Venice is best enjoyed over several days, with time to explore the different neighborhoods and discover the artisan workshops and boutiques that lie beyond the main tourist areas. Having a comfortable and well-located hotel makes the whole experience more enjoyable and gives you somewhere safe to store your purchases at the end of each day. We recommend booking your Venice accommodation through 

, where a wide selection of properties across every Venice sestiere and budget awaits, alongside genuine guest reviews, competitive rates, and the Hotels.com Rewards program that earns you a free night for every 10 nights booked.

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