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Venice
Venice is a city built across more than a hundred small islands in a shallow lagoon on Italy's northeastern coast, where canals stand in for streets and boats for cars. For over a thousand years it was an independent maritime republic, one of the wealthiest trading powers in the Mediterranean, and the architecture, art, and layout left behind from that era still define the city almost unchanged today.
No other major city in the world works quite this way: nothing moves on wheels in the historic center, distances are covered on foot across some 400 bridges or by boat along the Grand Canal, and the entire built environment sits on wooden piles driven into the mud of the lagoon centuries ago. That physical strangeness, as much as any single sight, is what visitors are actually responding to.
Venice is a place of never-ending wonder, and there's a lot more to the "floating city" than its majestic canals. Its landmark sights include the grand Piazza San Marco and Campo San Polo; palaces like the Doge's Palace, Palazzo Grassi, and Palazzo Labia (plus the Peggy Guggenheim Collection); churches including the Basilica di San Marco and the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute; and famous bridges like the Rialto Bridge, the Bridge of Sighs, and the Scalzi Bridge. The Accademia gallery, the Arsenal, and La Fenice opera house round out a list that could easily fill a week.
Here is a list of the best tourist attractions in Venice. It also includes an extensive list of palazzos (palaces) that you can admire when floating through the waterways.