30-minute gondola ride and guided tour of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice - Grand Canal and canals of the centre of Venice
30-minute gondola ride and guided tour of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice: € 70 per person.
An unmissable opportunity to get on an authentic gondola in Venice and follow a different itinerary from the traditional tour of the Grand Canal and San Marco.
Then you go to Piazza San Marco for the tour that introduces you to the main religious monument of Venice: the Basilica of San Marco.
The ticket is included and the visit also includes the Museum and the Terrace on the Square.
This is a tour with an official Venice guide and also includes the right to skip the line.
Duration of the 30-minute gondola ride and guided tour of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice
– 30 minutes.
What includes the 30-minute gondola ride and guided tour of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice
The tour includes a 30-minute gondola ride along the Grand Canal. It is a shared gondola that seats up to 4 people (+ the gondolier). Subsequently there is a guided tour of the Basilica of San Marco.
– Assistance for boarding the gondola
– 30-minute shared gondola ride on the Grand Canal
– Expert tour guide
– Skip-the-line entrance to the Basilica
– Guided tour of the upper floor of the Basilica: Museum and Terrace
– Personal audio system to better hear the guide
Cancellation policy of the 30-minute gondola ride and guided tour of St. Mark's Basilica in Venice
Receive a 100% refund if you cancel your reservation up to 24 hours before the activity starts.
Gondola of Venice
The gondola is the typical boat of Venice which – until the advent of motorboats – was the most suitable and common way to move between the winding canals of the historic center of Venice.
It derives its name from the medieval Greek kondura of boat typical of the Upper Adriatic – similar to the sandolo or the mascareta that can be seen in some paintings by Carpaccio and Bellini – and used in Venice at least since the High Middle Ages.
At the time of the Serenissima, the gondolas of the nobles stood out for the decoration that gave luster to the patrician houses of the city. They often relaxed with the so-called freschi, evening gondola rides through the city’s canals, often accompanied by music.
Nowadays the old custom is intended for tourists who can enter the canals of the old town or the lagoon for a romantic tour of the city, also accompanied by music and songs.
History of the Venitian gondola
The gondola appeared in historical documents only around the 10th century A. D. , but its name states an older origin.
So the kondura in medieval Greek was used to describe a boat typical of the Upper Adriatic – similar to the sandolo or the mascareta that can be seen in some of Bellini’s paintings – and used in Venice at least since the High Middle Ages.
So the kondura was similar to the current gondola but shorter and lower, and without the typical asymmetrical shape of the modern gondola. The bottom was shallow and flat to be able to navigate better in the shallow channels of the bars of the Venetian lagoon.
This brings us back to a much older document that testifies to the navigational abilities of the Venetians, that is, of those populations, who after the invasions of the Visigoths (401) and especially of the Huns of Attila (452), separated from the inland Aeneti and began to live on small islets of the lagoon, building stilts there. Here they moved for centuries on small boats of which there is no evidence but which were certainly – for functional reasons – very similar to the ancient kondura.
This is the document written in 537 AD by Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, Prefect Praetorus of King Ostrogoth Vitige, to the Venetian Maritime Tribunals, in which the Senator asks for the intervention of the Venetian fleet to bring the rich annual production of wine and oil from Istria to Ravenna – capital of the Empire.
"...ubi alternus aestus egrediens modo claudit, modo aperit faciem reciproca inundatione camporum. Hic vobis aquatilium avium more domus est."
Go to the page of the gondola of Venice
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Boat Tickets. Coming to Venice? Book in advance and skip the line!