Torcello

‘Mother and daughter, you behold them both in their widowhood: Torcello and Venice’, wrote John Ruskin. A powerful player well before Venice proper, this sprawling, marshy island is where the history of Venice began. Only a cathedral with remarkable mosaics, a little museum and a pretty round church remain as testimonies to its more important former self. Rural Torcello is a great antidote to the pedestrian traffic jams around San Marco.