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Barging and Waterway Holidays in Italy
Barging is a beguiling way of exploring the waterways around Venice and Padua, including visits to some of Palladio’s grandest villas. You can moor overnight on Venice’s minor islands and find you have both moorings and the rustic fish restaurants to yourselves.
Palladio’s harmonious villas line the Brenta Canal, the noble waterway that winds its way from Venice to Padua. Following the Brenta Canal south to Mirá leads to Villa Foscari, mysteriously known as La Malcontenta, and a dazzling Palladian concoction. Villa Pisani, not too far from Padua, is another grandly frescoed Palladian pile. A side trip takes you to further Unesco-protected villas that adorn the countryside near neighbouring Treviso and Vicenza.
The secret is to settle into Venetian time and accept the languid pace of life on water. Specialist boating companies offer self-skippered holidays around Venice and its islands - in a traditional houseboat or in a luxury cabin-cruiser. You can moor on numerous lagoon islands, including Sant’Erasmo, Venice’s back garden, or San Giorgio, overlooking Piazza San Marco itself.
Exploring the Venetian Lagoon: all the islands demand to be seen by boat: San Giorgio for its setting, opposite St Mark’s; Burano for its painted prettiness; Torcello for its astonishing mosaics. Compared with many outlying communities, these islands thrive, whether the preserve of fishermen, lace-makers, glass-makers or Benedictine monks.
Burano makes a splash of colour in a bleak lagoon, dispelling any mournfulness with its parade of jaunty fishermen’s cottages. In Murano, be tempted by gaudy Venetian glass and soft-shelled crabs. On a sunny day, Murano can pass for a smaller version of Venice but lacks the stark spiritual pull of other islands. Torcello, the strangest island, offers a stirring impression of the earliest Venetian settlement. The mood is set by the surreal isolation of the site, the solitary red-brick belltower. Venice becomes a state of mind, a canvas for projecting your myriad moods.
Sailing around Venice helps you feel the fragility of the city, seen propped up by mildewed sea walls. The lagoon marshes are criss-crossed with canals and sand banks, with an outlying area of diked lakes set aside for fisheries. The salinity of the lagoon varies, with water muddier near river deltas, brackish near the middle and sandiest yet saltiest near the lagoon entrances. Thanks to the tides, the channels are cleansed of sediment.
The Po Delta: Beyond the Venetian lagoon, Italy offers other appealing waterways. The Po Delta coastal wetlands, between Ferrara and Ravenna, are studded with nature reserves and architectural treasures. This Unesco World Heritage site is a mosaic of marshes, monastic sites, dunes, mudflats and islands. Dubbed the Italian Camargue, it is home to sturdy white ponies and migratory birds. Even on a day trip you can enjoy rewarding walks through the pine groves to the parkland – followed by dinner on clams and Adriatic fish in a rough-and-ready trattoria.
Our specialist operators will also be delighted to tempt you to Italy’s ‘lake district’. A reliable ferry service operates on Lake Garda, Lake Maggiore and Lake Como.