Giudecca

The beautiful painting of Venice in the Bodleian Library’s Codex of Marco Polo shows a lagoon full of swans and the Giudecca like a rocky desert, populated only by lions.

No one is sure if this long, tilde-shaped series of suburban islets was named after Venice’s Jews, forced to live here before being removed to the Ghetto, or for its more rumbustious nobles, exiled here in the 9th century, far from the action on the Rialto.

For many centuries it was a little garden oasis, until the 1800s, when it became a little Industrial Revolution oasis. Although many of its factories are now abandoned, it is still famously the home of Fortuny fabrics. Over the past few years, glamorous new hotels have arrived to keep company with the Cipriani, Venice’s most glamorous hotel, and property prices on the main fondamenta are going up as speculators capitalize on the fabulous view.