Coming to the Venetian Riviera and skipping Venice is a bit like going to New York and missing Manhattan. St Mark's Square, or Piazza San Marco as the locals know it, is where the star sights line up :a whole galaxy of them. There's St Mark's Basilica, a Byzantine beauty whose interior could have quite feasibly gobbled up half the world's gold reserves. There's the Doge's Palace, Venice's answer to Buckingham Palace :but considerably older and, dare we say it, prettier with its lace-like crenellations. And there's the Bridge of Sighs whose solitary window gave condemned prisoners their last, sigh-inducing view of Venice. On the subject of bridges, Venice is also home to the Rialto - a carved stone arch spanning the S-shaped Grand Canal, the city's famous waterway. All day long, gondolas, vaporettos and private water taxis glide up and down against a backdrop of wall-to-wall Medieval palazzos.