The Night Venice Keeps for Itself

Venice throws one big party a year, and it doesn't really tell the tourists about it. It's called the Redentore, and it happens on the third weekend of July. The city has celebrated it ever since the end of the plague in 1577, and after more than four hundred years it's still the most beautiful thing Venice does all year.

PhotoFireworks over the basin of San Marco

The night

By the time it got dark there were something like ten thousand boats out on the basin. People hang lanterns from one end of the boat to the other and set a real table on deck for dinner, as if the lagoon were just another dining room. Then at midnight the fireworks start over San Marco, and they go on for the better part of an hour.

We watched from the water, which is really the only way to do it. If you want to see what that looks like, turn the sound up and watch the full reel.

Where we stayed

We stayed at The Venice Venice, a thirteenth-century palazzo on the Grand Canal that has decided, with a wink, that it's also Venice Beach. There are skateboards and surfboards leaning against Murano glass, a bit of downtown New York on the frescoed walls, and somehow all that Americana works inside such an old Venetian house. Downstairs there's the Venice M'Art shop, which is part retro supermarket, part gallery and part bar.

Our room was the best version of the whole idea: a Murano chandelier hanging next to avant-garde photography, and a tall window looking straight onto the canal.

PhotoOur room at The Venice Venice

In between

The days were for wandering. We had cicchetti the way Venetians do, standing at the bar with a cold glass in hand, picking little things on bread off the counter. You always think you'll have just one. See the spread. The Biennale was on while we were there, and in a palazzo of its own, away from the main exhibition, we found Anish Kapoor. We stood in front of his void, a deep, dark mirrored bowl that pulls the whole room into it. It's one of those pieces you have to see in person.

If you go next July

Be on the water. The fireworks are best from a boat on the basin, and boats get booked far ahead, so sort yours out months before. Have dinner on board, because that's the whole tradition, and plan it like you'd plan a dinner party at home. And stay through Sunday, when the celebration carries on and the city feels like it belongs to the Venetians again.

Forty-eight hours, and maybe the most beauty you can find in Europe in a single weekend.

I'll be back next July. I already have the boat.