Doge's Palace Guided Tour with Casanova's Prison

The Doge's Palace is where the Venetian Republic actually ran itself for a thousand years, and the queue outside it can eat an hour of your day. You skip it. A guide takes you up the Golden Staircase into the council chambers — walls and ceilings by Tintoretto and Veronese, the largest oil painting in the world above the Great Council seats — then across the Bridge of Sighs into the prisons on the other side, where Casanova was locked up in 1756 and became the only man ever to break out. Ninety minutes, headsets so you hear the guide over the crowd, and afterwards you can stay inside as long as you like.