Food and Drinks in the Royal Garden
Snack carts sit outside the gate among the tourist-trinket kiosks all along the canal embankment. The ethnically diverse markets in Venice make picnicking a good idea in the gardens, where otherwise you’ll have to dump out your wallet for a pricey lunch. Save that experience for a well-prepared dinner outside the touristy spots. If you must, some smart cafés sit beneath covered walkways on the south side of St. Mark’s Square. Coffee and pastries are advertised as though dentists were just an historic fad.

Outside Venice’s Royal Garden
The Basilica of St. Mark dominates the square from the east side. Its towering Byzantine spires rise into the sky. The Basilica is such an imposing structure that you must walk to the opposite side of the square to fit it all into your camera lens. A tour through the 11th-Century structure is the main destination for most tourists, and so the city has taken advantage of this. St. Mark’s Square is not only picturesque, but stands as Venice’s shopping mecca. Wide sidewalks beneath colonnades lead shoppers along plate-glass windows decorated with the goods that make Venice a destination for art, crystal, colored glass, and jewelry.

You can grab a gondola ride outside the Royal Garden gates. These sleek boats are a good deal for water-level sightseeing, if at least for their kitschy historical and sentimental attachment to Venice.

From the canal wharf you can see the Santa Maria della Salute, a white stone with green inlay church. A good spot for photographs is just down the promenade, beyond the San Marco water taxi stop. A quick taxi trip across the canal to the Salute stop gets you there, but a more adventurous route is to walk through the back streets behind the garden & St. Mark’s. You’ll cross some sightly bridges, through a few medieval squares, then cross the canal over the Ponte dell’Accademia. Like I said before: Get lost! It’s an island with lots of canals. How far do you think you’ll get? For more on the city, jump to the Venice city page.
Directions to the Venice Royal Garden
The easiest way to find the garden is to get over to St. Mark’s Square, walk along the canal behind the Campanile bell tower, and just before the San Marco water taxi stop, you’ll see the entrance gates to the park on your right. St. Mark’s has a direct water taxi route from the St. Lucia train station and the nearby Rome Plaza parking lot.

(return to the Venice Royal Gardens main page)