The Rialto Area of Venice, Venice, Italy

I love the Rialto area of Venice and while at first thought it conjures up visions of many tourists crowding across the famous bridge; traffic jams on the Grand Canal as water taxis, vaporettos, speed boats and gondolas all compete for space; and stalls full of tacky souvenirs at inflated prices, you need only walk a short distance away from the bridge towards Santa Croce to find a little peace and a sense of being somewhere that’s a little closer to the real Venice. Of course, what is the ‘real Venice’? The city welcomes over 22 million tourists a year and in busy months, the tourists outnumber the locals by 20:1. You cannot completely escape the sense that you are in a kind of film set: there is undeniably something ‘unreal’ about Venice and nearly everything is set up for tourists. But I did notice on my travels there this week that things were cheaper in the San Polo/Santa Croce area. There are a lot of leather goods for sale, of course, and I saw a small handbag for €25 near St Mark’s Square while an identical one in Santa Croce was only €15. And of course in the famous Rialto market, while there are plenty of tourists snapping away taking photos of food they’ve no intention of buying, there are plenty of locals filling their bags with the vegetables, meat and fish to take home or to restaurants to cook. You’ll see gondoliers taking a break and standing in local bars drinking espressos or something stronger. And locals cluster in campi to talk to friends while children play around them, often holding, even early in the day, a glass of wine or their favourite Aperol drink, its bright orange colour a beacon in the crowds. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).