Venice sightseeing tour

Most people booking a Venice sightseeing tour are choosing between three ways of moving through the same compact centre: on foot with a guide, seated in a gondola, or on a motorboat along the Grand Canal. The 66 listings on this page cover all three, plus entry tickets, the lagoon islands and days out to the mountains and the wine hills.

Walking is where the prices start. The City Highlights walk with a local guide costs $27 for two hours, and the guided walk past the must-see sites $28. Both lead you between St Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge with the stories behind them, and both rate well: 4.8 from 1,597 reviews and 4.7 from 1,181.

The shared gondola on the Grand Canal is the other short option. The ride with app commentary costs $41, the version with storytelling on board $44, and both include a visit to the Gondola Gallery. The first is our top pick because it is the most reviewed of the 29 city sightseeing tours here, with 26,711 reviews; the lowest price among them, $27, belongs to the highlights walk. Its rating, 4.2, sits below both walks above.

The listing with the most reviews of all is not a sightseeing tour but an entry ticket: the Doge’s Palace with reserved entry, $39, rated 4.6 from 46,037 reviews, with a walk across the Bridge of Sighs inside.

Between a walk and a gondola sit the combinations. The Land and Lagoon walk ends in a shared gondola for $72; the hidden-streets combo pairs a walk through the old quarters with a gondola along quiet canals for $76. Either costs a little more than the cheapest walk and the cheapest gondola booked apart, in one booking.

By motorboat, the choice is shared or private. The guided trip on the Grand Canal takes 90 minutes for $111, past St Mark’s Square, the Rialto Bridge and the Bridge of Sighs; a private boat for an hour, by the Rialto Bridge, Ca d’Oro and the Accademia, costs $210. A gondola of your own starts at $178, rated 4.3 from 1,183 reviews.

Above $100 the walks get specific. The Commissario Brunetti walk, $149, follows the world of Donna Leon’s novels and the television series. For a guide of your own, the custom private walk starts at $56 for two to eight hours, with 372 reviews; the private walks priced over $300 have one to four reviews each, so weigh each score against its count.