Venice for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Take the slow boat and stand at the front; the palazzi go gold, then grey, and the whole canal is yours for forty-five minutes.

Tintoretto's cycle in the dark upper hall; borrow a mirror to read the ceiling, and sit on the bench until the room empties.

'No pizza, no lasagne, no tourist menu'; moeche crabs in season and a Soave in a hidden campiello that takes some finding, which is the point.

Stravinsky, Diaghilev with a ballet shoe on his grave, Brodsky, and Ezra Pound under cypress; two stops on the 4.1, and a quiet hour.

The first Venice: a seventh-century cathedral with a mosaic of the Last Judgement, a stone throne in a field, and almost nobody there.

Hemingway's island inn, dinner in the garden before the last boat back; check the vaporetto 12 timetable before you order the second bottle.

Walk the sunny quay with a coffee, cross by the number 2 to Palladio's votive church built after the 1576 plague; the Giudecca is the city's quiet side.

The museum of the eighteenth century, Tiepolo ceilings, Longhi's small scenes of Venetian life, and the room where Browning died.

Nine tables, the lagoon's fish, and no menu beyond what came in that morning; two sittings a night, so book the later one.

The square before the first tour arrives, with the pigeons, the sweepers, and the acqua alta walkways stacked at the side.

Mariano Fortuny's studio-palace of velvets and lamps, restored and open again; the top floor keeps the light he painted by.

A last coffee in the 1720 rooms where Byron and Proust sat, with the orchestra playing to an empty square; pay the music supplement and enjoy it.