Themed picks · Venice · Art
10 art towns near Venice
Ten towns: what each is best for, what a home costs, and the catch. In Venice's center a square meter costs €3,000 to €5,600; here it starts at €1,100, in Arquà Petrarca.
10 comuni · within 90 minutes of Venice · drive times by road from the city center
The Veneto's art is not Venice's art alone. Padua holds the Scrovegni Chapel's Giotto cycle, the work that changed Western painting. Vicenza is a single architect's open-air museum (Palladio designed nineteen buildings inside the centro plus another twenty-four villas in the surrounding hills). Treviso's fourteenth-century frescoes are at San Nicolò and Santa Caterina, both intact. And the smaller comuni hold further work that the bigger names skip: the Castelfranco Madonna by Giorgione, the Asolo cathedral's Bassano, the Cima da Conegliano in Conegliano.
Venice is the right base for this trip because the regional rail line runs the spine of the Veneto and puts every major art town inside an hour. Padua is 25 minutes from Santa Lucia. Vicenza is 45. Treviso is 30. The smaller towns (Castelfranco, Asolo, Marostica, Conegliano) need a car or a bus from those rail hubs, but the road network is dense and traffic is light once you are off the A4.
We picked ten towns with a deliberate weight toward the comuni outside the famous names, on the principle that one day each in Padua, Vicenza and Treviso plus four days fanning out into the hill towns is a richer week than three days in Venice. Drive times below are by road from Venice; for the rail-served towns we flag the train option on the individual page.
The towns
1Padova · Veneto · 50 min from Venice
Arquà Petrarca
Best for a soak. The comune has thermal baths.
homes €1,100 to €1,500 a m² in the center · 1,779 people
The Euganean Hills village where Francesco Petrarca spent his last four years and died in 1374, renamed in his honor in 1868.
Francesco Petrarca lived his last four years here, died at his desk in 1374, and is buried in the churchyard below his house.
Listed in I Borghi più belli d'Italia.
2Padova · Veneto · 34 min from Venice
Padova
Best for a trip without a car. The train stops in the commune.
homes €2,250 to €3,400 a m² in the center · 207,412 people
The university town that gave Giotto a chapel and the world a science of plants, with two UNESCO inscriptions inside one set of walls.
The fresco cycle that started the Renaissance. UNESCO 2021. Timed-entry, books out weeks ahead.
UNESCO-listed.
3Treviso · Veneto · 1 h 13 min from Venice
Follina
Best for a World Heritage site. UNESCO lists a site in the comune.
3,607 people
A Prosecco-hills borgo at 191 meters around the Cistercian Abbey of Santa Maria, with a cloister finished in 1268.
Santa Maria built from 1170, cloister finished 1268, minor basilica and national monument since 1921.
4Treviso · Veneto · 1 h 19 min from Venice
Cison di Valmarino
Best for a walk through the old town. It is on the list of Italy's most beautiful villages.
2,478 people
A Prosecco hills borgo at 261 meters under the dolomite rock of CastelBrando, the largest inhabited castle complex in Europe.
Among the largest inhabited castles in Europe, dolomite-rock fortress with Roman origins and continuous occupation, now hotel and conference complex.
5Treviso · Veneto · 1 h 3 min from Venice
Portobuffolè
Best for a small town. 738 people live here.
738 people
The smallest commune in the Treviso province, a Livenza river port centered on the fourteenth-century home of the poet Gaia da Camino.
Late-thirteenth-century poet cited by Dante in Purgatorio XVI; her family home survives as the centerpiece of the centro storico.
6Treviso · Veneto · 1 h 10 min from Venice
Asolo
Best for a wine weekend. It belongs to the national association of wine towns.
homes €1,800 to €2,900 a m² in the center · 8,911 people
A walled hill town at 205 meters that Caterina Cornaro ran as her court after trading Cyprus to Venice in 1489.
Queen of Cyprus traded her island to Venice for Asolo in 1489 and held court here until 1509, drawing Bellini and Bembo.
7Vicenza · Veneto · 52 min from Venice
Vicenza
Best for a long lunch. Food guides list four tables here.
homes €1,400 to €2,050 a m² in the center · 110,468 people
Andrea Palladio's home city, a UNESCO-inscribed open-air museum of the architect who reshaped Western architecture, with 23 Palladian buildings inside the centro and the Villa Rotonda just outside it.
23 Palladian buildings inside the walls + the Villa Rotonda outside: the architect who shaped Western neoclassicism lived and worked here for most of his life.
8Treviso · Veneto · 53 min from Venice
Conegliano
Best for Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG. The town gives its name to Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore DOCG.
homes €1,150 to €1,900 a m² in the center · 34,578 people
The Prosecco capital at 65 meters, birthplace of the painter Cima and home of Italy's first oenology school, opened in 1876.
The historic core of Prosecco; the hills between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene are a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.
9Treviso · Veneto · 57 min from Venice
Susegana
Best for olive oil. It belongs to the national association of olive oil towns.
homes €1,100 to €1,450 a m² in the center · 11,719 people
The Collalto castle town at 76 meters on the left bank of the Piave, holding one of the largest medieval fortresses in northern Italy.
One of the largest castles in northern Italy, 32,000 square meters of double walls begun in 1323 and still in Collalto hands.
10Padova · Veneto · 1 h 16 min from Venice
Montagnana
Best for a slow weekend. The Touring Club gives it its orange flag for small inland towns.
homes €1,100 to €1,400 a m² in the center · 9,110 people
A walled town on the lower Padova plain, its two kilometers of ramparts studded with 24 hexagonal towers.
Two kilometers of intact fourteenth-century brick ramparts with twenty-four hexagonal towers and four gates, one of the best-preserved rings in Europe.
We write about towns like these one town at a time, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, from Turin.
Why Venice is the base
Venice is the only Italian city that doubles as an art capital and a transit center. The Biennale grounds, the Accademia, the Frari, the Salute, plus the contemporary collections at Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi. Once you have walked through those, the regional rail spine (Mestre to Verona, Mestre to Trieste) puts another century of work inside the daily radius. The base in Venice itself is dense enough that you do not need to leave the city to fill a day if the weather closes in.
When to go
April through June and September through October. The Biennale (alternating years, opens late April or early May) draws crowds into Venice itself but pulls them away from the surrounding cities; Padua and Vicenza are calmer during a Biennale than during August. Winter is the quiet season; the smaller frescoed churches keep shorter hours but the museum halls are nearly empty. Avoid August.
Questions people ask
- Can I see the Scrovegni Chapel as a day trip from Venice?
- Yes. Book the timed entry slot in advance (it sells out weeks ahead in season). The chapel is 15 minutes' walk from Padua's station, which is 25 minutes from Venice Santa Lucia. Plan two to three hours in Padua minimum.
- Where are the Palladio villas?
- Inside Vicenza for the urban buildings (Palazzo Chiericati, Loggia del Capitaniato, Teatro Olimpico). Outside, the villas spread across the surrounding hills: Villa Almerico Capra ('La Rotonda') is on Vicenza's edge; Villa Barbaro is at Maser; Villa Emo is at Fanzolo. Most are open by appointment.
- Is Verona inside this radius?
- Not by car: it is about two hours away by road, so it is not on this list. By train it is closer, about 90 minutes from Venice on the Frecciabianca and 110 minutes by regional, and worth a full day for the Roman arena, the Castelvecchio museum, and the Romeo-and-Juliet circuit (skippable).
- Which smaller Veneto town has the strongest art on its own?
- Castelfranco Veneto, for Giorgione's Madonna in the cathedral. The painting alone justifies the day trip; the walled town around it is small but coherent.
How we picked these · We took every town in our catalogue within 90 minutes of Venice by car (32 of them), kept the 25 with a UNESCO listing, Borgo più bello status or a Bandiera Arancione, and ranked them by how many of those they hold and how close they are. Padua and Vicenza anchor the list; the walled towns and the Prosecco hills around Conegliano round it out. Verona is about two hours away by road, beyond this radius.
