Highlights & Hidden Gems With Locals: Best Of Venice Private Tour

Nicolo Merlo led us on an amazing private tour of Hidden Venice! He is very knowledgeable about the history of Venice in all things cultural , political and architectural. We loved all the insights that only a Venice insider such as himself could impart. Learned all sorts of details on the construction of Venice and on his ipad he showed us details most people would never learn. It was a great experience and he is a lovely person to boot! Thanks! Scott and Olga

My friend and I felt that a personal tour guide would be best when we visited Venice, as she is registered blind and wanted as much 'hands on' opportunities as possible. I found Withlocals via the internet and the site was easy to navigate. We messaged Monica to ask if we could book with her. The communication process was easy and her of our main requirements. My friend has experience of sailing and had asked if she could see how a gondola was constructed. Monica arranged an amazing tour of a construction and repair business, where we were able to have the process explained and touch the tools and materials. Watching my friend see with her fingers brought to life the skill of the boat makers. Monica took us to the Doge's Palace and gave us a tour which enabled us both to 'see' the incredible art work and to get a feel for the history of this remarkable place. St Mark's Square was busy but Monica's information whetted our appetites and we were able to return another day to fully explore. Monica's love of her city brought Venice alive for us and we were so glad that we had booked another day with her to visit the main islands. I would recommend a private tour guide when visiting somewhere as unique as Venice. Wthlocals made the booking process very easy.

Sadly the Crazy4Rome highlights of Venice and Murano private tour w/ private speed boat was not worth the money for our family. We thought highlights’ “admissions tickets” included tickets to the St Mark’s Basilica and Doge Palace since this was a 5 hour tour. But alas our tour guide, Davide, did not have tickets for these places. The tour included glass making in Murano (which was well worth a visit but we were told by our hotel that they offered free boat rides to Murano so we didn’t need to spend money on this.) Davide offered very little information about the history of Venice but he did have some suggestions for places to get authentic Venetian food. We paid for 5 hours but the tour ended one hour early. We did get some money back, but would have preferred a more thorough experience.

Loved our experience, completely tailored to what we wanted. Nothing was too much trouble and our guide helped us fully immerse in the atmosphere of Istanbul

Marco was absolutely brilliant! We learnt so much about the history of Venice from the perspective from a native Venetian. If you want to experience the true Venice (not just the tourist-side) then take this tour. We could not recommend Marco more! We'd even give him 10 stars if we could :-D

Sara was a marvelous guide. She took us off the beaten path into many of Venice’s districts. She gave us extra time and even helped us find a place to eat dinner. We truly felt welcomed to Venice and felt that we got to see a side of the city that many do not get to see.

This was a great off-the-beaten path tour of Venice! Adair was a fantastic local tour guide who showed us true hidden gems and history in Venice! Highly recommend this tour!

Federica was outstanding. We were able to learn about the history and culture of Venice that you would otherwise likely miss on a more traditional tour. She kept it informative and engaging even for younger children. I would highly recommend this tour.

Mattia was great. He met us at our meeting point and welcomed us to his city. We got to know each other a bit and then he proceeded to give us a history of Venice and the square we were standing in. From a visitor’s point of view, the little side streets and alleys can be daunting but he was able to make us feel at ease and go through the city while also giving us what Venice was, is and hopefully will be. We went to different bridges, the ports, pointed us the different islands around Venice as well as good places to eat. It was definitely a great tour and definite ask for him! Thanks Mattia!

Fabulous!! Would give 10 stars if I could. Great guide! Exceptional tour from a local the happened to be a historian. Answered every question and catered tour to our requests.

Really worthwhile tour of places close to my hotel. Beautiful chiasas chianti? Breathtaking architecture and views from bridges. Some really interesting historical information backed up with diagrams from Riccardo's tablet e g. Re: Foundations. Very kind, patient person. Went at my pace. Felt totally safe with him. Really helpful on a personal level.

The tour was excellent. Roko worked very hard to make the tour special for us. I reached out to Roko because I wanted to get engaged while in Italy, and I wanted to have someone take a photo of the engagement, but I wanted to surprise my soon to be fiancée, and I didn't want to give my camera to someone on the street. I worked with Roko beforehand to tweak our tour so to find a quiet corner of Venice where I could pop the question away from the crowds. The whole thing went off without a hitch. I've been on several tours before, but there is only one guide that I can say that without a doubt saved my marriage. <3 Thank you Roko!!!

Romy was a great guide. She was very knowledgeable about her city and shared that with our private group of six. I would recommend taking a tour with her.

Mina was a great guide. He knew a lot of history and shared this info with us to help us learn more about Venice and its history.

Personalized, friendly, animated and informed experience from a born and raised Venetian. Matteo makes a point of curating the tour based on what we wanted to see and lean. Awesome experience.

Great time with Adair. We appreciated to hear about life in Venice, history, seeing the hidden gems and some really beautiful places we could not have found ourselves. Thank you !

My friend and I could not have been happier with the visit. Sarah was knowledgeable, personable and interesting. It was all that a private guided visit could be: she asked us questions, paid excellent attention to our desires and tailored the visit to our wishes. She showed us the important must/sees but also amazing views, little known lively and beautiful neighborhoods, introduced us to talented artisans who gave us a private demonstration of their craft and one of the best restaurants we ate at in Venice.She deserves all the stars on the scale plus some!

Elena was amazing—our favorite tour guide by far! She was knowledgeable, incredibly nice, and such a pleasure to be around. We learned so much about Venice and its history, and the tour was a highlight of our trip. We highly recommend booking with her and would do so again if we return to Venice!

If you have the opportunity to have Elena guide you grab it! She was fantastic and made our last day and Venice the best day!

Loris was a lovely tour guide. Venice is a very busy place, overrun in many places with tourists. Loris took us on a very interesting walk, visiting places we never would have seen otherwise - in areas where there were no tourists! Highly recommend. Especially at the beginning of your visit to Venice so you can find places to revisit later in your stay.

Genny was an absolutely wonderful guide that despite the intense heat that day, gave us a wonderful experience seeing parts of Venice I had no idea about and really, mostly only local people know about. I often travel to that area and mostly only ventured to where all the tourist go. But she showed us the real Venice that only a real venetian could do.. I highly recommend her to anyone wanting to experience Venice off the beaten path..

Valentina was so great! She was patient with our schedule needs and changes, customized our tour for us with having a large group, was very communicative before the tour with planning, very knowledgeable, super kind, and even sent us suggestions for shops and restaurants for the rest of our day. We had a fantastic experience with her and our tour!

We took a family trip to Italy in July and booked a private tour with Riccardo. This was one of the best tours from our entire Italian vacation. Riccardo was very knowledgeable and extremely passionate about his town, Venice. He made it very interesting and fun for our kids too. We learned a lot of new stories and visited some hidden gems in Venice. Would highly recommend this tour!

Marco is an excellent tour guide, he knows the ins and outs of venice and a lot of personal local stories that bring the narrow allies and squares to life. He gave us great advice as well on how to enjoy the city on our own, as we were there for several days

We had a great experience with Matteo. He took the time to explain key elements of Venetian culture and way of life and he took us to not to obvious places in Venice, he also gave us restaurant recommendations and was a really great host.

Adair was our guide and did an awesome job giving us both the high level history of the city as well as some nice lesser known details. Definitely made the city come alive for us and everything we saw during the trip had more meaning.

Sarah, our guide, took us to places in Venice that we couldn’t discover by ourselves. She explained us in depth the history of Venice. We enjoyed very much her tour.

We had the most fantastic morning with Elena. We were a family group aged 12 to 80 and she made Venice come to life for all of us. Knowledgeable, engaging and, best of all, fun. Highly recommend.

Our day with Claudia was amazing! She took us through parts of Venice that we would never have found on our own and we enjoyed every minute, learned a ton, and have wonderful pics and memories!

Nicoletta was a wonderful guide through Venice. She communicated with me before the trip and we were able to make arrangements for a meeting spot that would suit my multi-generation group of 5. Nicoletta showed us everything we wanted to see in our day trip and more. She took us off the beaten path and also gave us the history of the sights. We immensely enjoyed our time with Nicoletta and highly recommend her to other visitors.

Sarah was a wealth of knowledge and we had an excellent time exploring the wonders of Venice! The tour provided an opportunity for us to see the highlights and hidden gems of Venice.

We recently spent a few days in Venice in June 2024. We had booked an afternoon with Matteo, and we could not be happier. We had spent a day by ourselves walking around the city main sights, so he adjusted the tour and gave us a whirlwind view of all the smaller neighborhoods of his home city. He is so knowledgeable about the architecture, culture and the art history. Highly recommend.

Nicoletta was an amazing guide. So professional, knowledgeable and passionate about her city. The weather was not ideal, but it all worked out. We spent 2 hours exploring hidden gems off the beaten track before taking a water taxi with Nicoletta to see Venice the best way you should see the city - through the canals! Nicoletta went out of her way to schedule a tour around one of the Murano glass factories. Nicoletta dropped us off ( by water taxi) at the glass factory and arranged for them to get us back to Venice. We finished our afternoon with lunch at a restaurant recommended by Nicoletta. I could not have asked for a better day!

Our guide was very knowledgeable of the art work and subject matter and showed us many insights to the artist work that We never thought of. She lives in this Venice community so she knew a lot of history.

Giada gave us an excellent tour of Venice. She shared a wealth of knowledge about the history of the city as well as many tips on modern aspects of Venice to enjoy. She’s a great storyteller who ensured we went at a pace that was enjoyable and educational for all of us. Thanks to her recommendation we enjoyed one of our best meals in the city. I highly recommend Giada if want to get an insider perspective on Venice away from the crush of the crowds.

Loris provided a fantastic overview of Venice in three hours. We walked almost 20,000 steps with a lot of history and fun facts about the city. Loris was super helpful even before the trip on giving tips where to get delicious lunch / Cicchetti and how to get gondola without dealing with 10,000 tourists. Overall it was an enjoyable day with Loris and I would recommend him as fun, friendly, and accommodating tour guide to anyone.

We booked a private 3 hour tour for a family of 4. I thought I knew quite a bit about Venetian history and culture, but was pleased that Elisabetta informed us of so much more about the former Republic, past and present. She gave us excellent recommendations for ciccheti and dinner. She has a great sense of humor and appreciated our inquisitiveness. After learning that I am a physician, she altered the tour to include the hospital and water ambulances. I highly recommend her.

Roko led five of us, ages 33 to 70, on an absolutely delightful tour of Venice! He is very knowledgeable, answering questions about history, law, art, engineering, food, and the environment in detail and with great patience. He gave us recommendations for restaurants and his favorite gelateria. He was kind. He has a great personality: we felt like a dear old college friend was showing us around his hometown.

I was admittedly a little nervous about scheduling our first tour in Venice only three hours after our arrival at the airport, however everything went like clockwork, and it was an absolute pleasure spending our first hours in the city with Valentina. She was very friendly and very informative, and the three hours just flew by. We saw and learned a lot.

We had an amazing experience with Romy. She is very knowledgeable, professional, and personable. We were able to cover a lot of ground and it relatively short period of time. We saw all the major sites in mass and still had time to sit down for a drink and rest. I would highly recommend Romy as she is an excellent guide!

Valentina was a perfect host for our inspiring tour of Venice. The walk was a perfect combination of major sights but most importantly also hidden gems. We really got a great opportunity to experience Venice with the best possible local guide. Thank you!

Elena — our amazing, historian Venetian native tour guide — has been truly the most remarkable tour yet —- not only in Venice and the many other TripAdvisor tours we have booked over the years. We have learned so much about Venice’s history, political and cultural struggles, innovations as well as how it actually was built. Alone if you ever wondered how on earth did Venetians create this magical city on mud and in the water. Elena will teach you. Her deep historical education and passion, as well as her personal family’s long Venetian participation in restoring old buildings brings extra special insights to you. This tour is worth every penny and you will always remember also her perfect English and her dedication to understand the historic Venetian documents that survived through the ages. You feel after meeting with her leaving a Master Class on Venice’s History and the cultural details of the common man alike.

Elisabeth was perfectly charming, informative, easy to understand in English and gave us a wonderful experience of Venician daily like. We are so grateful she was assigned to us and those with an interest in Venice and her history should request her. I was not able to click on the 10 we attribute to our tour!

Elizabeth was fun, engaging, and a “true” Venetian. Well traveled and well educated and has both an outside and inside perspective of Venice. Highly recommend.

Doges Palace was amazing. Roko was very knowledgeable and thoughtful. He recommended a place for lunch which was delightful.

Nicoletta was an incredible Tour guide. She was extremely knowledgeable About the history of Venice, The architecture, & artists. She gave us a little tidbits about the city that was very helpful. All in all she made our trip so wonderful and memorable.

Monica is the absolute best!! This was one of our favorite memories from our trip. Monica made us feel like we were old friends. We decided to skip the touristy spots and asked her to take us to her favorite places in the city. She brought us to beautiful gardens, an artist's collective, and an incredible costume shop, where we met the owner and designer. A truly magical experience. I cannot recommend her enough. Book her; you'll be so glad that you did:)

A great trip with Roko. It was pouring with rain but Roko was very thoughtful to avoid us getting wet where possible. He was very knowledgeable about his subject and equally able to answer all the children’s unusual questions too. He was also great with my son with special needs - highly recommended!

Nicoletta’s tour of Venice hi-lights wast first rate. We spent three hours exploring San Marco Balisica and Doge’s palace. Nicoletta’s knowledge of the artwork and history is top shelf. She was able to describe and explain nearly every main piece. Consider hiring a guide, you’ll get more value than you can imagine.