City Guide for creatives in Venice Five places to discover the city beyond tourist stereotypes

The everyday can be endlessly surprising. We think we know everything about our cities, but there is always something around the corner that escapes us. The urban stage becomes an enormous place for research, work, conscious relaxation, and mindful shopping. This is how nss's City Guide for creatives came to be — sitting somewhere between a survival kit and an alternative map for those who live in or pass through cities with sensitivity, imagination, and a critical eye. A project designed for people who work in the creative industries, or who simply identify with rhythms, spaces, and silences that differ from the usual tourist destinations. It may seem unlikely, but Venice offers a great many places where one can feel free to listen to one's own thoughts. In the collective imagination, Venice at the turn of the twentieth century was already the favourite refuge of thinkers from around the world — both for its playful side (think of the parties at Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, first with the Marchesa Casati and later with Peggy Guggenheim) and for its atmosphere of profound ease, as evoked by the melancholy Lido in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice.

In his Watermark (1989), Joseph Brodsky writes that in Venice a man is valued more for his silhouette than for his features, because here the eye holds dominion. In a city built to be looked at, even those who pass through it become image. We want to help you move through it without queues, discovering neighbourhoods untouched by overtourism. We offer itineraries to save in your phone's notes for your next visit to the Lagoon. A shift in perspective — even from creatives visiting for just a few days — could be an effective way to reimagine this fish-shaped island not as a Disneyland, but as a safe haven for creatives. As it has always been.

The Historical Archive of the Biennale (ASAC)

The ASAC, the Historical Archive of the Biennale, is a library and archive open to the public, located in Sant'Elena, a short walk from the Biennale Gardens, with direct access also from inside the Central Pavilion (currently under renovation until 2026). Here lies one of the city's least visited and most fascinating spaces: the Biennale Library, open Tuesday through Friday, housing over 160,000 volumes dedicated to the contemporary arts — from historical Biennale catalogues to essays on art, fashion, and cinema. The space, spread across two levels, is quiet, bright, freely accessible, and staffed by people who will help you without membership cards, bookings, or any other formalities. Perfect for a quiet pause between exhibitions, but also for a full day of research in complete relaxation. Spanning art, fashion, and cinema, this exceptionally well-stocked library can become a starting point rather than the end of a walk.

ABC Zattere

ABC Zattere is a newcomer to the city. Not your typical Venetian bacaro with fresh fish and cicchetti — it has a character entirely its own. First and foremost, the location: tucked away on the Zattere, the long embankment that runs from San Basilio facing the Giudecca Canal. Down a secluded alley, you enter this reimagined backyard of Palazzo delle Zattere, where the restaurant area has been completely rethought by Fosbury Architecture — who, following the Italian Pavilion in 2023, further deepens its ties with Venice. Key elements include boiserie inspired by historic Venetian cafés, flooring created in collaboration with Fornaci Sant'Anselmo, an Istrian stone bench salvaged from the Galeazze of the Arsenale, and a pergola inspired by the mobile canopy of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The project is completed by iconic furnishings and new planting in the courtyard. The food is overseen by Jack Martin, a young Welsh chef who has made Venice his home and who, together with Nathan Cal Danby, has crafted a pared-back menu firmly rooted in the local territory: naturally leavened bread, seasonal vegetables, Adriatic fish, cheeses, and natural wines.

Museo di Palazzo Fortuny

The Museo di Palazzo Fortuny is an essential stop for anyone who truly wants to understand the city's creative soul. It does not overlook a famous canal or a picture-postcard square. It stands there, hidden between Campo San Beneto and the Rio di Ca' Michiel, in the heart of the sestiere of San Marco. Built in the fifteenth century and inhabited over the centuries by merchants, it was transformed at the end of the nineteenth century by Mariano Fortuny — artist, inventor, set designer, and proto-fashion designer — into a total house-laboratory: a place of painting and photography, printed fabrics, patented lamps, and pleated garments such as the celebrated Delphos dress. Since 1975 it has been a museum. Its fascination lies in its materials even before the works it houses — among them set design prototypes, handwritten notes, and photographs that explain why Venice has always been a point of reference for artists from around the world. A continuous pilgrimage that has never ceased. What perhaps strikes visitors most is the architecture of the palazzo itself — the only one in the city with halls of these dimensions, conceived to house a creative workshop. No longer active today, yet still capable of suggesting a possible future for Venice.

Cino Zucchi, former Junghans area

The former Junghans area by Cino Zucchi offers a breath of contemporary architecture within a very particular urban fabric that, due to obvious constraints, seems never to see new residential construction. And yet, taking a short walk on the island of Giudecca — where the Festa del Redentore was recently held — one can admire several works by the internationally renowned Milanese architect. In the former Junghans area, you encounter things unusual for Venice: residents' associations, schools, families, and countless children who bring the spaces to life and offer a sense of possible futures for these places. Amid this everyday life, light and quiet architectures emerge — ones that do not mimic the Venetian style but listen to it: brick houses, metal profiles, pedestrian passages, and vistas that weave into the urban fabric without forcing themselves upon it. The entire intervention grew from the conversion of the former Junghans industrial complex, developing as a micro-city designed for living rather than merely for being observed. The residential buildings are sober yet finely calibrated — loggias, porticoes, courtyards, walkways over canals, shifts in level and material. Every detail speaks of a balance achieved through effort, free of imitative tendencies or spectacular gestures. It is a concrete idea of what contemporary can mean in Venice. Not an event, not a façade, but an urban gesture that endures.

Chiarastella Cattana

Chiarastella Cattana is one of those addresses one could easily imagine among the sophisticated shopfronts of Belgravia — the elegant neighbourhood at the heart of London — or in the Neubau district of Vienna. A retail space and creative studio that restores textiles to the centre of contemporary living, in a city where fabric is not only historical heritage but also gesture and declaration of care. Since Covid, the home has returned to the forefront of our attention: we spend more time within our own four walls, and every object — even the simplest, such as a towel or a tablecloth — can become a story. In this space, between Palazzo Grassi and the Ponte dell'Accademia, everything speaks of craft and visual intelligence. Alongside textiles and objects for the home, the studio-shop houses a unique selection of furniture and works by great masters: armchairs, glassware, and designer lamps by Carlo Scarpa, Massimo Vignelli, Gio Ponti, Paolo Venini, and Edgar Jayet. Conceived as a workshop where creation meets retail, this space is an island within the island.