Venice Biennale 2026: Locals Share Their Favorite Places to Eat, Drink, and Explore
What should a first-time visitor actually do in Venice during the Biennale? For three women who live and work in the city, the answer is less about racing through the official program than about learning Venice’s slower, more layered rhythm. Their recommendations, gathered ahead of the 2026 Venice Biennale, point to a city where major art institutions, neighborhood bars, and quietly ambitious new spaces sit within a few bridges of one another.
The Biennale opens on May 9 and runs through November 22, but Gražina Subelytė, Marta Barina, and Camilla Glorioso all suggest resisting the urge to overbook the day. Subelytė, a curator at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, advises starting with the Giardini and the Arsenale before branching out to smaller collateral exhibitions and leaving time simply to walk. She also points visitors toward Cantine del Vino già Schiavi for a quick aperitivo, Palazzo Experimental for a more polished but still easygoing drink, and dinners at La Zucca, Antica Locanda Montin, Antiche Carampane, or Anice Stellato.
Subelytė, who first came to Venice as an intern in 2007 and later made the city her home, recently co-curated “Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector” with Simon Grant, which opened on April 25. Her sense of Venice is both institutional and intimate: she names Scuola Grande di San Rocco as a classic, Fondazione Querini Stampalia as a true gem, and Fondazione Dries Van Noten as a newer destination worth watching. She also points to Isola di Sant’Andrea, where Microclima is shaping a future site for experimental and artist-led programming.
Barina offers a more local, studio-centered map. After leaving Italy at 19 and working in London for galleries including David Zwirner and for artists such as Oscar Murillo, she founded Mare Karina in 2020 as a hybrid artist studio, gallery, and agency. Now based in Castello, she urges visitors to look beyond the official circuit and visit artists’ studios. Her Venice includes aperitivo stops at All’Arco, Ozio, La Sete, and Ai Do Leoni, plus gifts from Sangueblu or Bruno. For a classic, she chooses Gelateria Nico; for something new, STUDIO VENEZIA, the city’s emerging center of artist studios.
Glorioso, a photographer and co-founder of Versatile, brings another angle: Venice as a working city, not just a backdrop. Born in nearby Padua, she studied at IUAV University in Venice, later moved to London for a master’s degree in photography, and returned to found Versatile in 2024, described as the first co-working space for creatives in Venice. Together, these recommendations sketch a Biennale visit that is less about checking boxes than about understanding how the city actually lives now — through studios, markets, bars, and institutions that continue to shape its cultural identity.
