Riva degli Schiavoni

Riva degli Schiavoni is Venice's grandest waterfront promenade, running roughly 850 meters along St. Mark's Basin from the Doge's Palace toward the Arsenale. Named for the Dalmatian merchants who once moored and traded along its edge, it's both one of the most photographed stretches of the city and a genuinely major public space in its own right, not just a walkway between other attractions.

The riva is a working transit corridor as much as a promenade: several vaporetto stops, gondola moorings and the route between San Marco and Castello all use the same pavement. Standing to photograph is fine; standing in the queue lane or across the pontoon gangways is what causes the crush.

Prices along it are the highest in Venice, and the restaurants facing the water charge for the view rather than the food. One street back, the same meal costs a fraction.

Gondola touts and unlicensed water taxis work this stretch harder than anywhere. Official gondola fares are fixed and published; anything quoted off the cuff is not the real price.

Because everyone passes along it, the riva concentrates a large share of the pressure that Venice struggles with. Walking a few hundred metres further east -- past the Pietà, toward the Arsenale and Campo Bandiera e Moro -- costs nothing and empties out almost immediately.

Riva degli Schiavoni runs from the Doge's Palace and Piazza San Marco eastward toward the Arsenale and Castello, served by several vaporetto stops along its length. It's at its most atmospheric early in the morning or in the evening, once the daytime cruise-ship and tour-group crowds have thinned.

This is one of the most congested stretches of pavement in Europe between about ten and six, when the cruise and day-trip flow moves along it in both directions and the vaporetto stops back up onto the walkway.

Early morning is a different place entirely. Before about eight the riva is nearly empty, the light comes across the basin from the east, and San Giorgio is lit frontally -- the single best hour on it, and the one every photographer already knows about.

Evening is the local hour. After the day-trippers leave, the riva becomes a promenade again, and the light going down behind the Giudecca is the reason to be facing west rather than south.

Winter strips the crowds out almost entirely and leaves the view, the wind and the water. Acqua alta floods this waterfront early -- it is among the lowest-lying pavements in the city, and duckboards go down here first.