Venice

Venice  is a thriving city but visitors often fail to get to the heart of it. Turn away from the crowds to find out why sestieri are doing it for themselves

- Shaney Hudson

Venezia è una vera città. These words are proudly unfurled from windows, on dozens of green banners that hang prominently along the Grand Canal. Chewing over the Italian for a few minutes, I ask an older Venetian next to me on the vaporetto for the missing word to help me solve my puzzle. “Vera?” I ask, while smiling and pointing to the sign. “Real,” he says, gesturing around him with pride. “Venice is a real city.” This may be so, yet many tourists miss the ‘real’ city. The key to understanding and enjoying it, is to explore its sestieri, the Venetian neighbourhoods. Go down the back alleys. Sit by the canals. Wander and get lost, and Venice will find you.

Dorsoduro

It’s dawn, and there are no other tourists but us on the Punta della Dogana at the tip of the Dorsoduro neighbourhood. It’s quiet, but thriving. Runners loop past, an empty vaporetto drops offa single passenger, and elderly men sit on upturned buckets casting a line in the Giudecca Canal. It’s the everyday and extraordinary, awash in the golden light of the rising sun.

Poised between the Grand Canal and the Giudecca Canal, the Dorsoduro is home to the city’s most prestigious galleries, including the Accademia, Peggy Guggenheim and Punta della Dogana.

“If you really know Venice, you want to stay here, not near San Marco,” says Paolo Morra, manager of the Sina Centurion Palace, a 50-room design hotel overlooking the Grand Canal. “It’s in the historical centre, but away from the historical centre.”

Despite its elegant pedigree, local life dominates the streetscape. On one canal, a fórcole workshop makes traditional wooden oars, while on a floating barge near the Campo San Barnaba, a greengrocer peels artichoke hearts by hand.