Three ways
to travel inside Venice.

This is the easiest of the three routes — entirely within modern north-eastern Italy, on modern motorways, with hotels in every town. It is the route to do first if you have not previously thought of Venice as a country with a hinterland.

Day 1 — Venice to Padua (40 km). An easy half-day. Visit the Basilica di Sant'Antonio, the Palazzo della Ragione, and (booked in advance) the Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel. The Venetian winged lion above the law-court entrance is the first you will see today.

Day 2 — Padua to Vicenza (35 km). Drive through the Palladian villas of the Brenta canal (the Villa Foscari, the Villa Pisani at Stra). In Vicenza itself — Palladio's own city — see the Basilica Palladiana, the Teatro Olimpico (a sixteenth-century classical theatre with a permanent painted perspective backdrop), and the Villa Capra-La Rotonda.

Day 3 — Vicenza to Verona (50 km). The old Venetian frontier with Habsburg Trentino. Walk the Roman amphitheatre, the Piazza delle Erbe (with its winged lion), the Castelvecchio museum, and the Veronese tomb-monuments of the Scaligeri family who ruled the city before Venice took it.

Day 4 — Verona to Brescia and Bergamo (130 km). Brescia for lunch — the Roman temple of the Capitolium, the Lombard-Venetian medieval quarter. Bergamo by evening; the Upper Town (Città Alta) is preserved within Venetian-built walls of the late sixteenth century, the most complete circuit of Venetian-period fortifications anywhere.

Day 5 — Bergamo to Venice (260 km). Long drive back; allow a detour to the Sirmione peninsula on Lake Garda for lunch (the lake was the Venetian-Milanese frontier).

Best with: an interest in Palladio, in Italian Renaissance urbanism, and in seeing how Venice administered cities other than itself.

This is the longest of the routes and the one with the greatest payoff for understanding what the Stato da Mar actually was. It is a series of harbour towns, each with a Venetian-built sea wall, a winged lion of St Mark over its gate, and a small surviving Italian-speaking minority.

Day 1 — Trieste to Pula and Rovinj (130 km). Pula's Roman amphitheatre is the conspicuous site; the Venetian fortress on the hill above the old town is harder to find but worth the climb. Sleep in Rovinj, a tiny Venetian-built harbour town with stuccoed pastel houses and a Baroque church-tower modelled on the campanile of San Marco.

Day 2 — Rovinj to Zadar (330 km). A long driving day on the A1 motorway. Lunch at the Krka waterfalls (a national park between Zadar and Šibenik). The walled town of Zadar is best seen at dusk; sea-organ at the western promenade.

Day 3 — Zadar to Šibenik to Split (130 km). Šibenik's cathedral of St James (Juraj Dalmatinac, fifteenth century) is one of the finest Renaissance cathedrals on the Adriatic, with one hundred and seventy-four carved stone portrait heads on its eastern apse. Split for the evening — the Roman emperor Diocletian's palace forms the core of the old town; the Venetian-period city wraps around it.

Day 4 — Hvar. Catamaran from Split (one hour). The Venetian-period arsenal on the main square is one of the largest surviving Venetian colonial military buildings; the fortress above the town is sixteenth-century Venetian.

Day 5 — Korčula. A second ferry south. The walled town of Korčula claims, on probably-not-true tradition, to be the birthplace of Marco Polo; the small museum dedicated to him is amiable rather than rigorous. The city walls and the cathedral are unambiguously Venetian-period.

Day 6 — Dubrovnik. Ferry or drive south. Dubrovnik is interesting precisely because it is not Venetian: the Republic of Ragusa (1358–1808) was an independent maritime republic of the same shape as Venice, with which it competed for the same trade. Walk the walls (about 2 km circuit, two hours).

Day 7 — Kotor. Drive south into Montenegro. Kotor itself in the morning; climb the fortifications above the town in the late afternoon. Fly home from Tivat, or return by ferry to Bari and onward.

Best with: a flexible itinerary and an interest in maritime fortification.

This is not really a driving route — it is a ferry-and-rental-car itinerary across the Ionian Sea and Crete, with substantial sea-time. It is the route for the Stato da Mar at its eastern extent, and it is the one that gives the clearest sense of how much of the Mediterranean Venice once held.

Days 1–4 — Corfu. Overnight ferry from Bari, or fly in. Two days for the old town and the fortresses; one day for Paleokastritsa and the western coast.

Days 5–7 — Lefkada and Cephalonia. Ferry south. Lefkada town's old quarter has the most distinctive Venetian-Greek architecture in the Ionians; Cephalonia's Castle of St George (Kástro Agíou Geōrgíou) was the Venetian capital of the island until 1757.

Days 8–14 — Crete. Fly from Cephalonia or Athens to Heraklion. Spend two days in Heraklion (the Venetian harbour fortress, the Archaeological Museum, walking the walls), then drive west along the north coast through Rethymno (Venetian fortress, old port) to Chania (the most intact Venetian harbour town in the eastern Mediterranean). The drive across the Lefká Óri mountain range to the south coast is one of the most beautiful in Greece. Fly home from Chania.

Best with: an interest in the Greek-Venetian period (which is still imperfectly understood by most Greek and Italian visitors alike), and a tolerance for ferry timetables.