The most recommended books about Venice

In 2006, John Berendt published a true crime caper every bit as serpentine and seductive as his iconic first book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – but this time, he took aim at the quirks and secrets of Venice, Italy.

Exploring the mystery behind a terrible fire that consumed Venice’s historic opera house, Berendt immerses himself in the tale.

Reading it felt like settling into the iconic city and getting to know the wonderful characters who call it home.

Plunder combined three of my favorite things in one unputdownable story: art history, Italy, and the Napoleonic Era.

Veronese's enormous Wedding Feast at Cana, painted for the refectory wall at San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, was seized with other masterpieces when Napoleon overcame the Austrians and wouldn't take Venice's neutrality as an answer. To this day it hangs in the Louvre, largely (pun intended) ignored because it’s opposite the Mona Lisa.

Salzman traces the common historic habit of swooping in like vultures during wartime to build one’s art collection, and for the first time I understood why Hitler thought himself justified in his own artistic pilfering!

Venice is a Fish is the book to carry to Venice so that you can sit in a campo somewhere (or at a café with a spritz) and read it during your stay. A funny, fun, and informative book about Venice as it is now, as well as over its long history. Then you can follow in the book’s footsteps and go for a walk and get lost.

This one has recently gotten attention thanks to the movie adaptation, A Haunting in Venice hitting the theaters starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot.

As a horror fan, I was instantly intrigued by the title, and Christie doesn’t disappoint. Does she ever? A body is found in a tub for bobbing apples and evil spirits are suspected. This one is a fun change from a polite society poisoning. I’m always a fan of a little supernatural intrigue.

When we think of the Renaissance, we often think of the names of famous artists or writers and the lives of governors of Italian cities.

In this book, Sarah Ross argues for the existence of "everyday renaissances," demonstrating that an interest in and concern of classical antiquity permeated far deeper into the social strata than we previously understood. She demonstrates how classical education and literature mattered to ordinary men and women of the artisanal and mercantile classes, perhaps even more than it did to members of the cultural elite.

She argues that even the most tangential association with culture and learning could help social mobility. I think this is a fascinating examination of how apparently elite cultural concerns can matter to ordinary people and be mobilized by them.

This book features a calico cat who reminds me very much of my own cat, Peanut Butter. But Conrad the cat is a very special cat—he talks!  And he helps retired police detective Lulu Lewis solve crimes. Lulu lives on a canal boat in Little Venice, which has always been a dream of mine. I gather this is the first in a series of Conrad the cat cosy crime mysteries, and I can’t wait for the next one!

Technically this is not historical fiction, but if you know anything about Venice and Constantinople, you will recognise our world in the past. Guy Gavriel Kay’s magical writing weaves history into fantasy, where incredible occurrences become perfectly credible. This story is about various individuals caught up in a conflict between those who worship the stars and those who pray to the sun. Each character is very real in their flaws and ambitions and desires. Battles are fought across the fantasy Balkan states and the Adriatic Sea, involving Seressa (Venice) and the Asharites (the ‘infidel’). Kay’s books are quite simply splendid; I love the way they take me on exciting journeys with fascinating characters. Un-put-downable.

A dragon, a great detective, many fae, and more than one resourceful librarian clash in a Venice so alternate I can't quite pin down the year—during Carnival, of course. This novel is part of the Invisible Library series, which I've loved from the very first book, The Invisible Library. I love Cogman's use of magic—and airships—as she builds whole worlds and as her librarians travel among them. Her plots are ingenious, but it is her marvelously twisty characters that impress me the most. 

As have most of her readers, I discovered Donna Leon through her Guido Brunetti mysteries, which are largely set in Venice. Leon’s Brunetti is a complex character, a quintessentially Venetian blend of cynicism and empathy that, now having read these essays, is clearly a reflection of his creator. That revelation didn’t only enrich my reading of the Brunetti stories; it offered insights into Leon’s craft, something the novelist in me always welcomes.

Yet that isn’t why I picked up My Venice. I’ve longed to return to Venice ever since I fell in love with it decades ago. And if Leon (an American expat now living in Venice) couldn’t transport me there physically, she did the next best thing with this insider’s chronicle of one of my favorite places.

In Bollen’s fourth novel, the boyishly handsome, 25-year-old Nick Brink meets the older and more remote Clay Guillory at the funeral of Clay’s boyfriend/benefactor, Freddy Van der Haar. Freddy, whose name is synonymous with American royalty, was one of the few remaining vestiges of the old New York gay scene. House poor, Freddy bequeathed Clay his shambling Venetian palazzo and a collection of counterfeit antiques. Nick falls for Clay, and they escape to Venice. To fund their new Continental lifestyle, they cook up a plan to con Richard West, a wealthy American retiree who has a sentimental affection for the Van der Haar name and fondness for acquiring antiques. Even as their criminal behavior begins to accrue a body count, we’re seduced by that all-too-recognizable outsider’s desire to belong to a place. For these men, Venice isn’t just a city but a way of seeing themselves, of imagining their futures.