The Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale opened its doors for the 52nd time this summer; this year promising to be one of the most exciting and high–profile since its inception. For over a century the biennale has occupied a unique position within the art world, showcasing the most exciting contemporary art, architecture, dance, cinema and performance from around the world. This year, broadly entitled ‘Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind’, the biennale offers up an astonishing array of artistic events, with something truly remarkable to suite everyone’s tastes.

Almost as vast as the areas of artistry covered during the biennale, is the extent of Venice given over to the festival. Wherever you go in the city between the months of June and November, you are sure to encounter at least one exhibition; one performance; one glitzy opening, one horde of art cognoscenti. In the Summer time particularly, it can feel like the city is full to bursting with art-tourists, on top of the already heaving number of holidaymakers. However, despite it’s relatively miniature aspect, Venice is a city of secret expanse: piazzas, walks, restaurants and vistas will reveal themselves to the more investigative tourist, alongside a wealth of more inconspicuous, biennale-themed sights. Of course, there are the more longstanding wonders Venice has to offer too: The Rialto Bridge, St Mark’s Square, the twinned islands of lace and glass – Murano and Burano – not to mention the works of Titian, Canaletto, Tintoretto et al. It really is a city of spectacle.

As one of the first destinations to be taken up by the budget airlines, Venice benefits from particularly cheap flights and you can pick up bargain plane tickets throughout the year. Departing flights are very regular from all the major UK airports, taking just under two and a half hours to get there. At the moment you can pick up flights for as little as £80 on flight comparison websites like Opodo or Cheap Flights.

Once off the plane, there is a regular water-bus ('vaporetti') service into Venice itself, depositing you outside the Santa Lucia train station, at one end of the looping Grand Canal. Knowing where you are in relation to the Grand Canal, coupled with a basic mastery of the more prominent vaporetti routes, are the keys to unravelling Venice’s labyrinthine geography.

The main venues of the biennale are in the far eastern parts of the city, within the old Arsenale, and the appropriately named, Giardini della Biennale. For the patriotic, in the Giardini you can find the British pavilion, containing rather restrained work by this years’ British representative, Tracey Emin. There is palpable magic about Venice, the ‘City of Water’, which is only heightened during the biennale, whether you choose to involve yourself with it or not. Art and the avant-garde has been a guiding tenet of Venice since the eighth century, and if the idea of ‘O Solo Mio’ being warbled with terrifying conviction by a straw-hatted gondolier strikes you as a little clichéd, then exploring the more contemporary heritage that is the biennale is a great place to discover a more modern side to Venice.

The Festival continues until November 21 so it might be frugal to wait until November to take advantage of cheaper flights. We found a flight on Cheap Flights from Gatwick on Nov 6th for just £80 inclusive of tax.

The official biennale website is http://www.labiennale.org/en/