A city of massive contrasts—gorgeously decaying classic facades alongside contemporary galleries and vanguard art and film festivals; busy piazzas full of spritz-sipping crowds and empty churches hiding Old-Master paintings—Venice still holds incredible discoveries for those who veer away from the expected path. Recently, the city has thrown up protections against the constant assault it faces: from tourism (there’s now an entry fee of 3 to 10 euros) and from climate change, with the deployment of multibillion-dollar sea walls to protect it from catastrophic floods. We can’t help it, though—we can’t wait to go back. Last spring in our Italy Travel Planner we included a ton of Venice intel, but we wanted to do a full-on Black Book with some stellar new hotel recs—while also going deeper with our local Venetian friends on their favorite neighborhood restaurants, artisan ateliers and shops, and slightly off-radar cultural detours so you feel set for your next visit to La Serenissima.
OUR CONTRIBUTORS
Alban Roger is a new New York-based creative director and design curator.
Annie Schlechter is a New York-based photographer. Her clients include Martha Stewart Living, New York magazine, House Beautiful, and Jonathan Adler.
Bruce Pask is the Senior Men’s Fashion Director for Bergdorf Goodman & Neiman Marcus. His styling and editorial work has been featured everywhere, from the pages of T: The New York Times Style Magazine to The Sopranos to the stages of Broadway.
Chris Wallace is a writer and photographer and frequent YOLO contributor. He is the author of The Twentieth-Century Man: The Wild Life of Peter Beard and was previously an editor at Mr. Porter and Interview magazine.
Emiko Davies is an award-winning cookbook author, photographer, and food writer based in Italy. Her book Cinnamon & Salt, on the cicchetti of Venice, came out last year.
Gioele Romanelli runs Hotel Flora with his family, and is the founder of Inside Venice, an online travel guide to Venice. As a local who’s deeply involved with the life of the city, we were eager to know his favorites
Robert Kittel is the founder of Pretty Hotels.
Skye McAlpine is a cookbook author and food writer. Her works have appeared in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The Sunday Times. Her first book, A Table for Venice, celebrated Venetian home-cooking. Skye splits her time between London and Venice, where she grew up, and has since moved with her family into a historic home in the Santa Croce district.
Sara Maestrelli is one of the creative forces behind the small (but growing) Italian hotel brand, Collezione Em. The brand’s most recent hotel, Violino d’Oro opened its doors in November 2023 in Venice.
Susanne Thun is a designer who works with her husband, the prominent Milan-based architect Matteo Thun), She owns a flat in an old palazzo on the Canale del Zattere.
Toto Bergamo Rossi is the director of the Venetian Heritage Foundation, a local resident and author of Venice: the Art of Living. His latest book Venice and the Doges: Six Hundred Years of Architecture, Monuments, and Sculpture was published in 2023.
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