Venice in a breathtaking class of its own

Villa Barbaro is a perfect example of the grandeur awaiting visitors to the Veneto. Picture / John Anderson

It's a grand entrance into Venice. Ferry passengers have standing room only, feet trapped among wheely bags, ears bewildered by a dozen simultaneous conversations. The crowd on deck sways and pitches as one against the pier. OSH would be hysterical.

This is La Serenissima city today, a cosmopolitan mix of tourist excess and everyday working life, the ordinary, the beautiful and the bizarre. The canals and palaces are familiar from a thousand photos, but normal dimensions no longer apply with moving water on every side.

I am joining a group of nine for a journey around the Veneto with Authentic Italy Tours, an operation run by brothers-in-law John Anderson, from Auckland, and Andrea Bassan, from Rome. Both are architects with diverse interests.

The assembly point is in Venice, at a former monastery opposite the Giudecca, en route to an exploration of the art, history and culture of the Veneto region.

Anderson explains that Italians like to travel this way "to savour the details".

The Veneto region extends across fertile plains and hills west of Venice and north to the Dolomiti mountains. The plains are crossed by innumerable rivers flowing from the Alps to the Adriatic.

Once, they were frequently wet and marshy, with seasonal floods. Successive drainage schemes over centuries have made this fertile area highly productive for agriculture.

The Veneto is now one of the wealthiest provinces in Italy.

Venice in May is overwhelmed with tourists, so we explore the further reaches of the Lagoon. Spring morning mist renders the waterfront buildings pastel. A cruise ship colossus lies hard alongside the Arsenale.

Reedy mudflats fan out like giant lilypads. High wooden fishing platforms, clusters of nets, weathered channel posts, seabirds, a speedboat cruising stridently over our wake indicate our passage across the acres of pale water.

First stop, Burano, island of bright-coloured houses and lace. Lunch includes risotto simmered with fish, aromatic and creamy. The dining room is crammed with paintings, from tabletop to ceiling.

In the Lace School Museum an elderly lacemaker demonstrates her delicate art by the window. "Complimenti," I say, "What amazing patience." She glances aside wistfully, "Lace used to be made all over the island."

On Torcello, we admire glorious mosaics in the 1000-year-old Basilica. Santa Fosca chapel next door has just witnessed a wedding and huge sheaves of white flowers hang on every pew. The perfume of lilies is overwhelming. Red candles in bronze lanterns flicker around the Byzantine shadows.

Southwards is Chioggia, with long porticoes and a practical preoccupation with fishing. We visit San Domencio to see the last Carpaccio painting. Don Pepino the local priest (is he really 84?) gives us a rundown on local history.

Napoleon's people used the church as a stable. A strong smell of fish is outside where two men sort nets on the dock. People cycle home for their midday meal. The Lagoon is heaven for seafood lovers.

Back in Venice, we visit a gondola oar and rowlock workshop. Once numerous, the few remaining craftsmen keep to tradition, creating intricately carved gondola parts to individual measure. I observe with new understanding of how skilfully the gondolieri manoeuvre through narrow canals and across deep water.

From Venice we set forth by van to tour the mainland. Spring flowers are everywhere: cream elderberry, mauve lilac, white horse chestnut, purple petunias in pots. Robinia grows wild by the fields, through the woods, or planted alongside footpaths, white blossom floating in drifts.

We stop to photograph a field of red poppies. Grape vines are only just coming into leaf, but most other crops are already thriving: grain, sweetcorn, vegetables, fruit, olive groves. Cherries are ripening crimson. The Veneto is lush on all sides.

We marvel at creative stacks of firewood and traditional rounded haystacks. A line of cypress trees signals a cemetery road and chestnuts are on the hills among the oak woods.

While the Veneto is a wealthy area and valuable food source for Italy, some people still value a quiet, self-sufficient lifestyle. A country-dwelling friend shows us her underground cellar hung with handmade salami and homegrown hams.

The Veneto plains are villa country. The wealthy citizens of the earlier Venetian Republic enjoyed building sophisticated mansions on their lands. Country life was considered a healthy relief from the stress of city and business, as well as a status symbol.

We visit a score of villas, varied in size and style, maintenance and functionality. They follow Palladio's principles, with elegant symmetrical facades and spacious interiors, often frescoed enthusiastically with baroque figures swirling on walls and ceilings.

Villa Foscari, named "La Malcontenta" after the original wife who was unhappy here, stands by the Brenta Canal among avenues of trees.

Rural calm predominates. Designed with quiet understated elegance and finely frescoed interiors, it is still in comfortable family use with graciously decaying furniture and pots of fresh magnolia leaves in each room.

By contrast, the large park of the Villa Pisani Stra is designed extravagantly, with lengthy green vistas and optical illusions. We pass through grand white colonnades to look out towards an elaborate fake facade at the opposite end of the lake.

We discover other garden buildings, moats, monuments and archways throughout the woods. Birdsong reverberates across the knee-high lawns, speckled with pink and mauve wildflowers.

My favourite is the unassuming Villa Pojana, another Palladio, where restoration work is under way slowly. The exterior is plain, even severe, but elegant in proportion. This was once a working farm. The family bred horses for the Venetian Republic and cultivated fish in their ponds.

The dry and airy attics were used for barn storage of hay, rice and grain. At harvest-time, rooms were multipurpose, portable beds laid throughout. One small room used for "intimate purposes" is disarmingly frescoed on a theme of fecundity and fertility.

While admiring the Veronese frescoes at Villa Barbaro at Maser, we shuffle around in large floppy slippers provided at the door, polishing the floor at the same time.

Padova, Vicenza, and Verona, the big three, stand on the plains west of Venice. We indulge in an abundance of art, culture and history. In Padova we focus on the Scrovegni Chapel and Giotto's 14th-century frescoes, illustrating the lives of Mary and Jesus with crisp clarity.

In Vicenza is a thought-provoking exhibition about architecture in a fine palazzo. Then it's down the street to the Teatro Olimpico, Palladio's final masterpiece of architectural trompe l'oeil.

We experience new fresco painting in Verona and I promise to return one day for opera in the Roman amphitheatre.

Our accommodation is unusual but attractive: one, a villa overlooking the green Euganean hills, another, an ancient converted farmhouse with antique farm implements displayed in the barn; next, the latest in cool but comfy minimalist design, and last, a traditional mountain chalet.

Monastery breakfasts "could do better", but otherwise our meals are remarkable, frequently accompanied by several wine varieties. We rapidly evolve into "buone forchette" ("good forks"), which is how Italians describe people who like their food.

Enthusiasts thrill to the wonderful seafood around the Veneto, but beware the baccala (dried cod).

My preference is the dark red duck-ham sliced with mandarin butter in Padova, or the Galina Padovana with pinenuts, though the dish advertised as local parrot is, I trust, a mistranslation.

One evening we dine organic vegetarian in an antique loggia frescoed with geometric decorations. Our hosts are a congenial couple who graciously write out their recipe for Risi e Bisi (rice and peas), a popular local dish.

Wednesday is a birthday so we begin cheerfully with breakfast prosecco, light laidback bubbly. Later, we lunch on a mountainside terrace above Feltre.

Our enthusiastic proprietors scurry back and forth from the kitchen opposite with relentless supplies.

First, trays of entrees, tiny quiches, prosciutto, smoked beef, salami, zucchini and artichoke. Next, creative plates of Tortelloni di mirtillo, pasta toned dark green with fresh myrtleberry, filled with ham, drizzled with yellow butter, a colourful and delicious dish.

After this a stack of mixed roasted meats with salads and vegetables, followed by strawberries draped in yoghurt and biscotti. I resolve never to eat again.

We visit generous friends of our guides for dinner often. One, an artist, has a river running swiftly through her garden and a house full of art. Others have a courtyard where we eat and mingle to a mellow performance on fiddle, recorder and guitar.

Highlights happen every day: ancient history, inspiring art, stunning landscapes, unusual museums, contemporary architecture.

Lake Garda, where steep mountains drop directly into the water, is edged with cypress and olive groves. On the Punta San Vigilio we drink morning coffee on a curved stone jetty where colourful sailboats are lined up, and it's postcard-pastiche gorgeous.

In Bassano, I drink grappa at Nardini's ancient distillery overlooking the Brenta River. One small glass of Rosso aperitif cures my cough for hours. Friendly council officials make a welcoming speech and we, as honorary ambassadors for tourism, find our photo in the local newspaper the next day.

From the plains into the mountains, we spend a few days in Cortina d'Ampezzo, a large ski resort. It rocks in season, but May is quiet, and we explore the northern Veneto.

The Dolomiti are impressive: rugged, rough and steep, with numerous peaks. I'm not much used to mountains, so find it novel to spend a day up high walking the tracks through the snow.

Huge clumps melt in the heat, in fact it is only a few weeks since the last snowfall. There is a constant sound of water trickling across rocks and through boggy channels.

The dazzling snow and white rock is blinding, sunburn is imminent and I am glad of my green umbrella.

Large black birds, grachio alpino, drift on the air currents and lurk nearby while we picnic. Hordes of people are out walking, and rock climbers, like tiny beetles, grip above on to vertical cliffs.

The mountain landscape is decidedly Heidi. Below the melting snow are fir and larch forests. We pass ski resorts, alpine houses with fruit trees and chooks in the garden, large cows with bells, munching new grass.

We negotiate road tunnels, winding roads laced with hairpin bends and streams marked "torrente". We hear a cuckoo in the woods. Yes, it sounds just like a Swiss clock. In the meadows are millions of spring wildflowers. I collect more than 10 different types of yellow flowers in one field alone, then start on the mauve.

We meet innumerable friendly people on tour, enthusiastic about what they do, curious about us and New Zealand. John and Andrea help us communicate where necessary.

After two weeks there is still much more, but that must wait. We return to Venice and the sea.

* Janet Thomson paid for her own travel.

Venice, Italy tours

Authentic Italy Tours specialises in hosted tours to parts of Italy that are off the beaten track, designed for travellers interested in Italian culture, art, food, wine, architecture, landscape and music.

Further information

For information on itineraries for next year, see link belo, or contact John Anderson, phone (09) 361 1113, or Authentic Italy Tours, PO Box 36-294, Herne Bay, Auckland