Venice

Venice stands on wooden piles driven down through the mud of a shallow lagoon, and there is not a car in the historic centre. So where to stay comes down to feet: how mobile you are, and how many of its several hundred bridges you will put up with. Every district trades one thing for another, and it is hard to go far wrong. San Marco puts the basilica and the piazza outside the door, and charges for them in crowds and prices. Cannaregio, in the north, is where most Venetians actually live, quieter at night and fifteen minutes' walk from the big sights. Giudecca and the islands are quieter again, with water between the bed and nearly everything else.

Start in the Ghetto, in Cannaregio. The Senate decreed it in 1516, in a quarter where the state foundries had been, and the word may come from them: the Italian for pouring molten metal. From there it is architecture and art wherever you stand, with the big museums south of the Grand Canal in Dorsoduro. Route 1 stops everywhere between the station and San Marco and takes up to 45 minutes over it, which makes it a tour of the canal for the price of a ferry ticket. The same public ferries go on into the lagoon, to the glass furnaces of Murano and to Burano for the lace and the brightly painted houses.

We have been in August and in winter, and winter is the one for beating the crowds. August was packed, and in a city where everyone is on foot there is no way round a crowd, only through it. Winter swaps people for water: acqua alta, the tidal flooding of autumn to early spring, reaches St Mark's Basilica, 64cm above the sea, before most of the city, so check the tide forecast before joining its queue. And avoid Carnival, the fortnight or so before Shrove Tuesday, when around three million people arrive to undo the point of coming in winter.

Where we ate has not stayed with us, but one rule has: if the food matters, do not eat on the Grand Canal. Drink on it instead. The Gritti Palace, on the San Marco bank, was Doge Andrea Gritti's house from 1525, and its terrace sits right on the water, facing the dome of Santa Maria della Salute. Have the cocktail there. Dinner is somewhere with a worse view.