Does anyone love Venice in summer? Clots of teenagers clog Rialto Bridge, there’s a snaking gondola jam on the narrow canal next to the Doge’s Palace and, among the tourists buying Chinese-made tat in St Mark’s Square, locals calling out pickpockets have become a TikTok sensation. With visitor numbers back to pre-pandemic levels, it’s no wonder that Unesco has recommended adding Venice to its list of endangered world heritage sites. Once again the centre of Venice feels claustrophobic and overrun — about as appealing as a glass of warm, flat prosecco.
However, it really isn’t that difficult to swerve the selfie-stick hordes and find somewhere that still feels unspoilt and magical. The 200 square miles of lagoon, which have clasped the floating city in a salty embrace for centuries, is the obvious place of sanctuary in high summer. And even though the elegant Ca’ di Dio Hotel, a renovated 13th-century monastery, stands in the waterfront thick of things in the Castello district, it also offers the perfect escape from the crowds: a tour with a local botanist of the watery wonderland where Venice first began, celebrating the city’s culinary heritage and including unusual foodie treats foraged from secluded canalside spots.
After scudding across the water to the island of Burano in a sleek mahogany water taxi, my husband and I spy the bearded botanist Gabriele Bisetto and his gunmetal-grey boat. Soon we’re out on the far northern reaches of the lagoon, and when he cuts the engine the silence is broken only by the gentle lapping of water and the sound of seabirds as we drift along.
“There are just so many stories here; so much is buried under the surface of the water because sea level in Roman times was eight metres [26ft] lower than today,” he says. As we chug past Torcello he explains that it was one of the first islands here to be inhabited, long before Venice was established. A refuge for merchants from barbarian marauders during the downfall of the Roman Empire, it was once home to almost 20,000 people. Malaria eventually forced them out, and now this sleepy spot has just a few dozen residents, plus the visitors who come for tranquil lunches at the vintage celeb hangout Locanda Cipriani or to admire the relics of its glory days.
We admire the oldest building in the lagoon, the stunningly austere 7th-century basilica of Santa Maria Assunta (its interior — filled with mesmerising, gilded Byzantine mosaics is even more impressive). Torcello is also home to the lovely Church of Santa Fosca. But we’re here for natural treasures, not man-made ones, and because Bisetto’s 20-year-old boat is a flat-bottomed Carolina he can navigate the shallow canals and gullies that weave their way through salt marshes and mudflats to point out flourishing flora.
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While this part of the lagoon may be silent and serene, it’s very much alive — and the unique micro-environment produces great ingredients that many Venetians simply ignore, the botanist says. “They don’t do much foraging, but they should. Try this,” he suggests, ripping a small handful of wild herbs and plants from the bank and dispensing cookery tips. “It’s wild spinach. Just dress it with oil and lemon and serve it with duck or mix it with ricotta and use as a filling for ravioli.”
As we mooch along a canal Bisetto is full of short-trousered enthusiasm, picking bitter leaves packed with iodine (“great for high blood pressure”), samphire and salicornia (glasswort), all of which have a briny tang. By far his favourite find is artemisia maritima, or sea absinthe, used to flavour grappa. “But I’m using it to flavour gin to sell — it’s my new project”, he says with a grin.
Heading back out into the lagoon he points out flamingos, cormorants and nesting redshanks, and tells us about moeche, the prized, green soft-shelled crabs that are caught around Burano twice a year (when they moult) and sell for handsome sums at the Rialto market. Little goby fish, meanwhile, are caught from the mud at low tide and traditionally served in a soupy risotto di go. “For me it’s poetry,” he says. “It makes my spine tingle just to think of it; you have to eat it once in your life.”
We return with a big bunch of greenery to take back to Ca’ di Dio, where in the gleaming cocktail bar we enjoy the gin infused with lagoon herb and salt that Bisetto created; adding tonic really brings out the lip-smacking salinity. Sadly goby risotto isn’t on the menu at the hotel’s waterfront Vero Venetian Roots restaurant (it’s a speciality at Al Gatto Nero on Burano), but our quiet alfresco dinner is full of local loveliness. There are artichokes from the kitchen garden, stuffed squid with lagoon glasswort and glasses of Venusa. This golden, intensely mineral and savoury wine is made from dorona di Venezia, thick-skinned grapes native to the lagoon that are grown at the Venissa Estate on the tiny island of Mazzorbo.
A trip to taste it at its source the next day is tempting, but what really makes it irresistible is the thought of lunch — the estate also has a Michelin-starred restaurant, as well as a more casual osteria and a swish B&B. It’s a 30-minute vaporetto ride from Fondamente Nove on the north side of Venice. Most passengers are headed for the lace shops and rainbow-coloured houses of Burano; just a few of us get off at Mazzorbo, where a few hundred feet from the dock an unobtrusive brick archway leads to a micro-vineyard surrounded by medieval walls. We wander through to find vines, a 14th-century bell tower and gardens that grow all the fruit and vegetables used in its restaurants.
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Venetians have drunk dorona wine for centuries (I’m not surprised to hear that it was the doges’ favourite), but it was thought to be extinct after the devastating acqua alta (high tide) in 1966, when vines spent days underwater and a 2,000-year-old wine industry seemed to have been wiped out.
Miraculously, Gianluca Bisol — whose family has produced prosecco for hundreds of years — discovered a few cuttings growing in a private garden near the basilica on Torcello, managed to gather another 80 or so and planted them on the site of the monastery he bought in 2002. It’s been a passion project for the family, and now it’s the world’s only commercial winery growing dorona, with tiny volumes of Venusa and the more complex Venissa Bianco, both organic wines, produced each year after a harvest that takes just three hours.
I can see why it’s a cult wine. The expensive Venissa Bianco comes in covetable, squat bottles hand-blown on Murano and the labels are gold leaf (from Battiloro, the last artisan goldbeater in Europe, based in Titian’s old studio in Cannaregio).
We spend an idyllic afternoon tasting both wines in the airy, laid-back osteria with a lunch of spaghetti, raw prawns and sea lettuce, followed by a vast plate of seafood, including some suspiciously alien-looking Adriatic shellfish, but fabulously fresh creatures (mains from £17). How do you put the sparkle back into a summer visit to La Serenissima? Grab a large slice of lagoon life.
Julia Brookes was a guest of Ca’ di Dio Hotel, which has B&B doubles from £378 and the Botanical Experience from £182pp (vretreats.com), and Venissa, which has tours and tastings from £39pp (venissa.it)
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