My first time in Venice was just after the pandemic travel restrictions were lifted. Like many, I felt the need to make up for lost time and was eager to get home to Italy after months of forced exile.
Being confined to my apartment made me want to see all the places I’d put off visiting until then, and as an Italian—and travel writer—who had never been to one of the world’s most visited cities, my first stop had to be Venice. Then, the city was empty of tourists, a scene so surreal it made La Serenissima feel like a sci-fi film set. Everything was beautiful, but having the canals and cobbled streets all to ourselves felt as special as it was unfair.
But upon my second visit, when the train pulled into Santa Lucia’s station, I knew I was going to get the real Venice experience, complete with tourist crowds, gondolas, and overpriced drinks. And there it was, as beautiful as I remembered and as busy as you could possibly imagine.
I don’t mind mixing with the tourists. After all, even as someone who travels for a living, I am a visitor too. What I did want, though, was to be as immersed as possible in the city, and for that, it meant I had to skip the hotels and find the most authentic accommodation available.
When I stumbled upon Palazzo Cristo San Marco on Airbnb, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A 15th-century palace, located just minutes away from the iconic Piazza San Marco, underwent a complete renovation to create a design-led home that retains its antique charm while ensuring the utmost comfort for its guests. The pictures, though, don’t do this marvelous piece of classic Venetian architecture justice.
To avoid the hour-long queue that was waiting for us at the vaporetto (water bus) station, we decided to brave a half-hour walk from the train station to the house, through Venice’s Cannaregio district. We found the entrance to our accommodation hidden in a small street, which would be hard to spot without knowing it was there. The front gate is designed to resemble an old door, while cleverly concealing a modern, high-tech entry system.
We stepped into a riad-like garden filled with lush pink flowers and greenery, a fountain, statues depicting the four seasons (dating back to the 19th century), and benches for sitting and relaxing. It’s a haven of tranquility that is extremely rare to have in a city like Venice. All around it, the beautiful pink-hued palace that was going to be our abode for the next couple of days looked both lavish and homey.