Hands-On Things to Do in Venice
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A gondola ride keeps you seated. These four don’t, and they’re the closest thing Venice has to activities you actually do rather than watch from a boat or a queue.
Paint a mask instead of buying one
Ca’ Macana, in Dorsoduro at number 3172, is a genuine working atelier where you choose a blank mask from over 50 styles and paint it yourself in acrylics with feathers and ribbon to finish, after a short history of why the craft nearly vanished before it was revived. Check session times on Ca’ Macana’s official site , or book a mask-painting session on GetYourGuide .
Try glassmaking on Murano
A general Murano visit is covered in our day trips guide; this is the class version. A boat transfer takes you to a working furnace, where a maestro shapes molten glass in front of you, followed by a smaller hands-on piece, typically a glass bead rather than a full blown vessel, since real glassblowing takes years to learn safely. Expect roughly 2.5 hours from pickup to return. Compare Murano glass-blowing classes on Viator .
Make cicchetti, don’t just eat them
A cicchetti class walks you through Venetian small plates, baccalà mantecato and sarde in saor among them, often paired with a bacaro crawl or a market stop first. Eating cicchetti unguided at any bacaro is still the cheaper, simpler option and needs no booking; this is only for readers who want the recipes too.
Row standing up, Venetian style
Voga alla veneta rowing, standing and facing forward instead of seated and facing backward, is specific to this lagoon, and local clubs teach it to visitors on request. It’s the genuine alternative to paying someone else to row you, and it’s the one option here that most people never realize exists.
None of Venice’s ticketed monuments belong on this page (see our sightseeing guide for those), and neither does any boat tour, gondola included, which sits under attraction tours and romantic getaways instead. Squero di San Trovaso , the historic gondola boatyard, is real and still working but isn’t open to visitors or bookable in any way, just a free view from across the canal.
Verdict: pair the mask workshop with a rowing lesson if you only have one afternoon spare, since one is a quiet indoor hour and the other puts you back on the water yourself. Book a day or two ahead in peak season, since small workshops sell their slots out first. For the monuments this page skips on purpose, see Venice sightseeing , and for the island behind the glass class, see Venice day trips .