The Fabric of Venice: Eight Squares that organise the city - a walking guide - Paperback

Most visitors walk straight past the hidden gems of Venice on their way to the obvious sights. In this guide, each route invites you to slow down and follow the natural character of the city's open spaces. As you find yourself within an arena, marketplace, or parish hub, you will gain insight into the everyday pulse of this multifaceted city.

Once you know where to look, the details are there. Find a wellhead that supplied the neighborhood before the aqueduct arrived in 1884, or perhaps a building façade that still carries the memory of a five-hundred-year-old fresco. Shifts in the paving hint at where canals once ran, and in a square with a palazzo on one side, a guild hall on the other, and a market in between, each offers a clue as to how the square once worked.

Eight fields, called campi (singular: campo), form the framework of this guide. This is not a handbook for museums or interiors; rather, it is a way of seeing the city differently. Experience Venice not as a postcard, but as a lived-in place, still shaped after centuries of use. With over one hundred points of interest and twenty-four carefully chosen places to stop and relax, there is something in these walks for everyone interested in seeing the city as it was built - and as it is still lived.