John Berendt
The City of Falling Angels
La Fenice, Venice’s famed opera house, is destroyed by a fire in the opening scene of the book, and the mystery at its center is whether the cause was arson or an accident. A second theme is the exploration of the true heart of Venice, behind the touristy façade.

Joseph Brodsky
Watermark
Living in exile, Brodsky discovered Venice and went there often to write. His Venice is the cold, damp and seemingly deserted city in winter, a quiet and meditative place where he could work on his essays and poems.

Marlena De Blasi
A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance
De Blasi, a native of Schenectady, will seduce you with her cozy and romantic tale of romance and marriage to a passionate Venetian.

Andrea Di Robilant
A Venetian Affair
Using letters his father found in the ancestral palazzo in Venice, the author tells the story of the forbidden love affair between Andrea Memmo, an 18th century ancestor, and the lovely Giustiniana Wynne.

Marissa Fabris
Adventure Guide to Venice & the Veneto
The Veneto contains 7 provinces, of which Venice is one. The guidebook has a wealth of information on the art, food and wines, nightlife, shopping and historical sites of the region.

Jan Morris
The World of Venice
Morris writes about the island, its history, arts, food and inhabitants and describes in vivid detail the grandeur of the palaces and the romantic skyline with its bell towers, domes and crenellations.

Venice: The Collected Traveler,
an Inspired Anthology and Travel Source
Although this book includes practical information about travel to Venice, it is not primarily a guidebook, but a collection of essays by distinguished writers. Among them are accounts of eating (lots of accounts of eating), proposing marriage, and Venetian traditions.

Classics Set in Venice

Thomas Mann
Death in Venice
Writer Gustav Aschenbach travels to Venice to satisfy his wanderlust and desire for the exotic. Instead, he becomes consumed by a forbidden passion. This is a tale about the darker side of Venice.

William Shakespeare
Othello and The Merchant of Venice
Shakespeare’s timeless plays: the tragic tale of the jealous Moor of Venice who “loved not wisely but too well”, and his comedy about love and a business deal.

Fiction Set in Venice

Michael Dibdin
Dead Lagoon
Rome police inspector Aurelio Zen is in Venice under false pretenses. He's ostensibly there to investigate the "haunting" of an old family friend, but actually, and illegally, he’s in the floating city to find the missing patriarch of a wealthy American family.

Sarah Dunant
In the Company of the Courtesan
Following the sack of Rome in 1527 by Christian armies, the beautiful and celebrated courtesan Fiammetta flees with her faithful companion, the dwarf Bucino, to her native town of Venice. There she must recover her fortune by enticing powerful and wealthy men as lovers.

David Hewson
Lucifer’s Shadow
A mystery surrounds a concerto written by a young Jewish woman in 1733. When her long-missing violin and the manuscript of the concerto are found, a modern day scholar attempts to discover the secret of the concerto.

Patricia Highsmith
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Tom Ripley is sent to Italy by wealthy Herbert Greenleaf to retrieve Greenleaf’s son, who has found its attractions so seductive that he does not want to return home. Tom becomes equally enamored of Europe and insinuates himself into Dickie Greenleaf’s circle. This is a chilling portrait of a sociopath.

Jane Jakeman
In the City of Dark Waters
When Count Casimiri, scion of an old Venetian family, is murdered in a grotesque manner in his crumbling villa, two servants are blamed. Young American lawyer Revel Callender, investigating this murder and that of painter Claude Monet’s brother-in-law in Paris, believes the servants were framed. Deception, perversion and class privilege obscure the truth in both cases.

Joseph Kanon
Alibi
Adam Miller, a war crimes investigator in postwar Vienna, visits his mother in Venice, where she has decided to live. When Adam discovers she is enamored of an Italian doctor, he opposes her marriage, convinced that her fiancé is a fortune-hunter.

Rosalind Laker
The Venetian Mask
Two orphaned girls, friends and students at a music school, wed men whose families are sworn enemies. Laker’s Venice in the 18th century is a city of masks, family feuds and sinister intrigue.

Jane Langton
The Thief of Venice
Langton’s amateur sleuth Homer Kelly attends a rare book conference in Venice while his wife tours the city. She becomes involved with a nasty murderer in a plot that involves stolen art treasures and a missing woman.

Janet Laurence
Canaletto and the Case of Westminster Bridge
Although this mystery is set in 18th century London, it features Canaletto, painter of Venetian scenes, in the role of sleuth. He teams up with London artist Fanny Rooker to try and discover who attacked and robbed him twice.

Donna Leon
Death at La Fenice is the first in Leon’s series of thoughtful and immensely entertaining police procedurals starring Commissario Guido Brunetti. Brunetti loves his wife and children, fine food and wine, the law and his beautiful Venice.

Michelle Lovric
The Remedy: A Novel of London & Venice
Lovric’s is a gothic tale of intrigue and deception set in 18th century Venice and London. A young girl, pledged to a convent, escapes the cloister and is trained as an actress and a seductress-spy.

Lauro Martines
Loredana: A Venetian Tale
This story of lust, scandal and political intrigue in Renaissance Venice is told in the form of letters between Loredana, a widow, and her unconventional Dominican confessor. Loredana tells of her disastrous marriage to a man who would rather watch as his male lovers seduce her than touch her himself.

Iain Pears
The Titian Committee
British art dealer Jonathan Argyll joins talents with Flavia de Stefano of the Italian Art Theft Squad to investigate the murder of a member of the International Titian Committee. Pears’ mystery series combines detection, art and humor. The other books in the series are set in a variety of glamorous European cities.

William Riviere
By the Grand Canal
WWI is over, and Venice and the Venetians are exhausted and fearful of the future. Although the city is crumbling, High Thurne, a British diplomat, chooses to stay there with his Venetian friends in their rundown palazzo. Fleeing an unhappy marriage in London, he finds both passion and tragedy in the city he loves.

Sally Vickers
Miss Garnet’s Angel
Retired English schoolteacher Julia Garnet has a late coming of age after she travels to Venice, falls in love and becomes enamored of a series of paintings in a Venetian church. The plot involves stolen art, a love interest, and a guardian angel.

Niall Williams
As It is in Heaven
Emotionally troubled Stephen Griffin is lovestruck when he hears Italian violinist Gabriella Castoldi perform at a hotel in Ireland. When she returns to Venice after their affair, she discovers she is pregnant. Stephen follows her to Venice but cannot find her.

Music

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a native Venetian who became one of the most influential composers of his time. Nicknamed “the red priest” because of his red hair, Vivaldi was not only a composer and a conductor, but a virtuoso violinist as well.

Art

Jay Williams
The World of Titian
Titian (1477-1576) was the most prominent artist of the Venetian Renaissance. He defined and perfected the major elements characteristic of the Venetian style: the interest in light, color, and a free and sensual brushwork which was unique in Italy.