Danieli, a Four Seasons Hotel, Venice

Four Seasons properties answer to their surroundings, and in Venice that means a palazzo on the Riva degli Schiavoni where the lagoon stretches wide and glittering toward San Giorgio Maggiore. The brand's hallmark attention, twice-daily housekeeping and round-the-clock in-room dining, meets Venetian grandeur in Castello, the city's largest sestiere and one of its most storied. This is a city built on 126 islands laced together by canals and 472 bridges, founded in the fifth century and shaped by a thousand-year republic that commanded Mediterranean trade routes and filled its coffers with silk, spice, and grain.

Step outside and you are in the thick of it. The sestiere unfolds in a tangle of calli and campi, each turn revealing a Gothic arch, a carved wellhead, a shrine tucked into a wall. The Rialto Market, less than a kilometre west, hums with fishmongers and vegetable stalls at dawn. The entire centro storico is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an architectural miracle where even the smallest buildings carry the weight of centuries.

Venice Marco Polo Airport lies eight kilometres across the lagoon, reachable by water taxi in under half an hour. Treviso serves budget carriers 26 kilometres northwest. Once you arrive, the city moves on foot and by vaporetto; there are no cars here, only water and stone.

Terrazza Danieli offers Mediterranean cooking in a dining room trimmed with mirrors and fabrics, but the real draw is the outdoor terrace, open May through October, with 180-degree views across the lagoon to the islands beyond. For a full gastronomic pilgrimage, head 1.3 kilometres inland to Glam Enrico Bartolini, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant set within the quiet Palazzo Venart, its gate opening from a narrow calle into a world of contemporary creativity. Further afield, Le Calandre in Sarmeola di Rubano, 41.6 kilometres west, holds three stars; the Alajmo brothers have turned a roadside address into a temple of modern Italian cooking, soft-lit and stripped-back, where the design itself becomes part of the theatre.

The Rialto Market, a short walk northwest, still sells the morning's catch and seasonal produce as it has for centuries. Wander the rii and you will stumble on wine bars, osterie pouring Veneto whites, bacari serving cicheti on slabs of polenta. Book a water taxi to San Giorgio Maggiore, or cross to the Lido's sandy beaches in summer. Don't miss the fresco cycles in Padua, 36 kilometres inland, where Giotto and his contemporaries covered chapel walls in the fourteenth century, now a UNESCO site in their own right.

Winter in Venice is cool and damp, temperatures hovering around seven degrees, the city wrapped in mist that softens the stonework and muffles footsteps on the bridges. Acqua alta can flood low-lying campi, turning Piazza San Marco into a shallow lake. Fog drifts off the lagoon at dawn.

Spring and autumn are the most forgiving seasons: mild air, fewer crowds, light that shifts from silver to gold as the day progresses. May and October see temperatures in the high teens to low twenties, ideal for walking the calli and sitting at outdoor tables. Rain arrives in bursts, especially in October, but clears quickly.

Summer brings heat, the thermometer climbing into the high twenties, and the city fills with visitors. The lagoon glitters under hard sun, vaporetti churn between islands, and the Lido beaches offer relief. July and August can feel crowded, but evenings cool enough to reclaim the streets.