Beauty of Venice is obscured by the crowds coming to enjoy it

I’M STARTING to think that I don’t quite understand the concept of tourism.

You’d think with two years to see the best that Europe has to offer, we’d be able to really appreciate its great cultural centres.

And yet, when we threw ourselves at the feet of Venice, by common consent the world’s most beautiful city, I came away wondering what all the fuss was about. The fault is mine, of course. From St Mark’s Square to the Rialto, the Bridge of Sighs and the Doge’s Palace, Venice is a remarkable location, full of architectural, religious and historical treasures that only somewhere like Rome could hope to match.

That it has survived at all, given its precarious position and the ever-present threat of inundation, is something of a miracle.

But the fact it retains its charm when, on the day we were there, most of the rest of the world chose to drop in and have a look, too, is, quite frankly, scarcely credible.

At every corner, along every canal, there is a simply staggering vista, unspoiled by ugly modern architecture, obtrusive fast food joints or incongruous carbuncles.

And while you may have to mentally airbrush out the thousands of other tourists queueing, taking pictures (usually of themselves) or simply stood stock still, awestruck at the splendour of their surroundings, there is no getting away from the notion that Italy is unfairly blessed with more “heritage” than the rest of the world combined. And yet... Well, the feeling persists that, first of all, something has to be done to curb the sheer numbers of people who invade Venice on a daily basis.

It wouldn’t bother me if you had to book your time slot to get into the city if it meant not having to shuffle around shoulder to shoulder with 20 million other Herberts all trying to get a glimpse of some mosaic or other.

But if you did limit numbers, the first to complain would almost certainly be the gondoliers.

A more sullen, pampered and disgruntled bunch I’ve yet to come across.

And yet, why they didn’t all have beaming smiles on their faces remains a mystery.

After all, they are charging €80 a time to punt unwitting tourists up and down the canal network for 35 minutes.

One of them was slugging from a bottle of lager as he did it, while it wasn’t uncommon to see others puffing away merrily on a fag.

Gone are the days, it seems, when the gondola experience included being serenaded by one of these boatered blokes singing O Sole Mio in a pleasing tenor. In New York, the public transport on the river usually features a running commentary on the history of the city and other points of interest, courtesy of the often wise-cracking pilots.

In Venice, the three or four-man crews of the otherwise excellent canal buses spend their time idly chatting to each other or, as I saw, laughing as they left one passenger behind on the quayside after they’d installed the rest of his family on board.

His pleas for them to let him on were met with just a casual shrug and a garbled shout, in Italian, that another bus would be along in a minute.

Add to all this poor signposting, a €1.50 charge to use the public loos and the frankly criminal cost of a coffee in St Mark’s Square (€18 is about the going rate) and you see why it can be hard to fall in love with the place.

We found the best locations were those slightly off the tourist trail, like the nearby islands of St George and Murano where you felt as if you had stumbled upon a private haven, such was the lack of other tourists.

It might be too early to judge Italy just on our experience of Venice but, at the moment, our next stop – Austria – can’t come soon enough.