Venice Carnival: The Public City and the Private One

About Venice Carnival

Venice Carnival — the Carnevale di Venezia — ends on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, which places it in February or early March depending on the year. Its origins run back to the Middle Ages; it was abolished in 1797 and revived in 1979. The modern event draws around three million visitors.

That number is the whole story. Carnival in the Piazza San Marco is a crowd. Carnival behind a palazzo door is something else entirely, and the two barely overlap.

The Two Carnivals

The public one is free, open and genuinely worth seeing once: costumed figures on the bridges, the Volo dell’Angelo above the piazza and a city so full that moving through it takes planning.

The private one is a short list of masked balls held in private palazzi along the Grand Canal — Il Ballo del Doge and a handful of others — with period costume, a dress code enforced at the door and guest lists closed months in advance. These are not ticketed events in the ordinary sense, and this is the part that requires arranging rather than booking.

What to Actually See

The programme has fixed points worth planning around. The season opens on the water with a procession along the Cannaregio canal. The Volo dell’Angelo — the Flight of the Angel — sends a costumed figure down a wire from the Campanile into the Piazza San Marco on the first Sunday, and the piazza is impassable for it. The best-costume judging runs through the fortnight on a stage in the square, and the closing night ends on Shrove Tuesday.

Away from the programme, the thing most visitors remember is the early morning. Costumed figures pose for photographers at dawn on the empty bridges and around the Salute, before the day crowds arrive. It costs nothing, requires no arranging and is better than anything ticketed.

Where to Start

• Decide which carnival you came for — the squares and the balls are different trips that share a fortnight
• Book Venice before you book anything else — the hotels on the Grand Canal are committed the previous summer
• Costume is not optional at the balls — period dress is the entry condition, and it is hired or made in Venice, months ahead
• Come midweek — the final weekend and Shrove Tuesday are the busiest days in the Venetian year

A last practical point: Venice has no cars, and during Carnival the vaporetti are full to the point of uselessness. Private water transport is not an indulgence in that fortnight, it is the difference between three engagements in an evening and one.

And Carnival is the one time of year when the city looks the way the paintings do, which is worth two cold weeks.

The Masks Are a Trade, Not a Souvenir

Venice still has working mask ateliers — papier-mâché, moulded and painted by hand, in workshops that will make to commission. The volto, the bauta, the moretta and the plague doctor’s medico della peste all have histories attached, and the shops selling plastic versions near the station have nothing to do with any of them.

The same applies to costume. Period dress for the palazzo balls is hired or commissioned from a handful of Venetian houses that do nothing else, and they work months ahead. Arriving without it and hoping to solve the problem locally in Carnival week does not work.

How We Help

• Access to the private palazzo balls, where guest lists close months before the dates
• Period costume commissioned or hired from the Venetian ateliers that supply them
• A hotel or palazzo on the water in a city that fills early
• Tables across a fortnight when Venice is fully booked, via our Fine Dining & Nightlife service
• Private water transport, which during Carnival is the only sane way to move — ask your Business Concierge