Venice (Fusina), Italy

Venice needs no introduction, yet she never fails to astonish. Approaching the city from the industrial mainland port of Fusina, the transition is one of the most dramatic in all of cruising: the flat, prosaic Veneto gives way to the shimmering lagoon, and suddenly the campanile of San Marco, the domes of the Basilica, and the coral-pink façade of the Doge's Palace materialise like a mirage on the water. This is a city that was born improbably on 118 islands, threaded together by more than 400 bridges, and sustained for a thousand years by a republic whose merchant princes built palaces that still define the word magnificent. To arrive by water — as every Venetian once did — is to understand Venice on her own terms.

The Grand Canal remains the greatest boulevard on earth. Traced in a sinuous S-curve through the city's heart, it is lined with Byzantine, Gothic, and Renaissance palazzi whose reflections ripple in the jade-green water below. Board a vaporetto at Piazzale Roma and ride the length of it: past the Fondaco dei Turchi, the Ca' d'Oro's lace-like loggia, under the Rialto Bridge with its bustling parade of tiny shops, and on to the Accademia and the baroque splendour of Santa Maria della Salute. Disembark at San Marco and let the Piazza swallow you whole — Napoleon called it the drawing room of Europe, and on a moonlit evening, with the orchestra playing at Caffè Florian, the description feels like understatement.

Venice's culinary tradition draws from lagoon and sea with an elegance that mirrors the city itself. Cicchetti — the Venetian answer to tapas — are best enjoyed standing at a bacaro counter with a glass of sparkling Prosecco or a small ombra of local wine. Try the sarde in saor (sardines in a sweet-sour onion marinade), baccalà mantecato (whipped salt cod), and moeche, the soft-shell crabs harvested only during brief seasonal windows and fried to a shatteringly crisp perfection. For a sit-down meal, seek out risotto al nero di seppia, the dramatic squid-ink risotto that is as photogenic as it is flavourful, or fegato alla veneziana, tender calf's liver with caramelised onions — a dish that has graced Venetian tables since the Renaissance.

Beyond the well-trodden circuit of San Marco and the Rialto, Venice rewards the curious wanderer. Take the vaporetto to Murano to watch master glassblowers shape molten crystal into fantastical forms, then continue to Burano, where houses painted in every shade of the rainbow line canals barely wider than a gondola. The island of Torcello, Venice's oldest settlement, offers the haunting Byzantine mosaics of its cathedral and a silence that feels almost sacred. Back on the main islands, the Dorsoduro neighbourhood delivers the Gallerie dell'Accademia's treasury of Venetian painting — Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto — and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, where twentieth-century masterpieces inhabit an unfinished palazzo on the Grand Canal.

Venice Fusina is served by an enviable roster of luxury cruise lines, including Azamara, Explora Journeys, Oceania Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Silversea, and Viking. From the Fusina terminal, water shuttles whisk passengers across the lagoon to the heart of the city in approximately thirty minutes — a crossing that doubles as one of the most scenic commutes imaginable. The best times to visit are April through June and September through November, when the light is painterly, the crowds thin, and the lagoon takes on an almost otherworldly stillness. Venice, for all her fame, still keeps secrets for those willing to wander beyond the obvious.