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Map of Venice
A city with no streets for cars, only canals. Seen from above, Venice is a fish of tightly packed houses split in two by an S of water, floating in the middle of the lagoon.
What you see on the map
The Grand Canal. The great S that crosses the city from the station to San Marco, almost four kilometres of water. On the map it is the line that organises everything.
The maze. More than a hundred islands stitched together by bridges, with the small canals (the rii) slipping between the blocks. Drawn building by building, the city is an incredibly tight pattern: here it is not worth summarising it as blocks, because that tangle is exactly what makes it recognisable.
San Marco and the Doge's Palace. The most famous waterfront in the world, with the square opening onto the basin.
The islands around it. The Giudecca, long and narrow, to the south; San Giorgio Maggiore opposite San Marco; and to the north, the cemetery of San Michele, a square island with its grid of paths.
The lagoon. Water surrounds everything, filled with shore lines that repeat the shape of each island.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:18,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, takes in the whole historic city, from the station to Sant'Elena, framed by the lagoon.
1:5,000 on A3 goes into a single district, San Marco, Dorsoduro or Cannaregio, and shows every canal and every bridge.
Landscape if it is a rectangle. The city is wider than it is tall: horizontally it fits with less water around it.
Make it yours
Open the example and look for your own Venice: Murano and Burano, to the north, have canals of their own and fit whole on A4. The Lido, to the east, is a long strip that suits landscape paper.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
