Slow Travels in the Veneto
Freya Stark’s City of a Hundred Horizons, Venice’s Giudecca, Cinema Life, Chioggia, & the Language Island Hidden in a Forest
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Today’s The Green Travel Guide is for all the mindful travellers who like to look at travel a little differently. We’re headed to the Veneto region of Italy - to explore the one-time home of travel writer Freya Stark in hillside Asolo ‘the city of a hundred horizons’; we’ll drift by hidden corners of Venice as I take you on a tour of my favourite Venetian places and the ways I enjoy ‘reading’ the city; and we’ll explore a language island hidden deep in the Cansiglio forest where time has stood still.
The City of a Hundred Horizons
“There in the foreground was beloved Asolo, its castle and small hills like the stitching on a sampler, and the Dolomites behind it - all within sight of the campanile of St. Mark’s in Venice on a clear autumn day.” - Freya Stark
Legendary explorer and travel writer Freya Stark, best known for her travels and writing on the Middle East, made her home in Asolo, the City of a Hundred Horizons, in Italy’s Veneto.
Her parents were globe-trotting travellers and artists, and young Freya first stayed in Asolo with her parents when she was a baby - a town with a long history of attracting poets, artists and intellectuals.
In a life full of travel and adventure, Freya would return to soothing Asolo over and over, eventually dying here at the age of 100. If you walk to the Santa Anna Church, in the hillside cemetery, you’ll find her headstone, carved simply ‘Freya Stark, Writer and Traveller, 1893 - 1993’.
She lived in Villa Freya, where she would write, tend her English roses in a tumbling garden, and entertain visiting writers and artists.
And it was here, in the Veneto, that her early childhood love of writing was sparked. When she was nine, she was gifted a copy of ‘One Thousand and one Nights’ and so began a love affair with the Middle East. She learnt Arabic and Persian, and in 1927 she travelled again to Asolo before setting out for Beirut. Her travels at that time took her through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Yemen and Egypt. Throughout her life she continued to travel, including trips to Afghanistan and Nepal late in life.
While well known for her writing and adventurous spirit, Stark is less recognised as a photographer - yet she documented many of her trips with thousands of images, most taken on a reliable Leica III.
A collection of some of her black and white prints can be viewed at the Freya Stark Photo Collection in the Middle East Centre at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford.
To discover more of her writing read:
The Valley of the Assassins (1934) – A daring exploration of Persia’s remote mountains and the legendary Ismaili “Assassins,” blending travel narrative with historical investigation.
Baghdad Sketches (1932) – A vivid, observational account of life, politics, and society in interwar Baghdad, mixing travel, personal encounters, and cultural insight.
A Winter in Arabia (1940) – An intimate winter journey through southern Arabia, chronicling Stark’s encounters with desert landscapes, tribal customs, and the rhythms of Arab life.
Asolo was an important settlement from Roman times: traces of thermal baths, an aqueduct, forum and roman theatre fill the elegant town. In the 15th century it became the de facto Renaissance court of Caterina Cornaro (Queen of Cyprus), playing host to artists, poets and intellectuals of the time. Asolo holds longstanding close ties to the Serenissima (Venice). Visit and you can soak up the creative legacy left behind not just by Freya Stark, but also actress Eleonora Duse, the royal court of Queen Caterina, and poet Robert Browning.
“One can only really travel if one lets oneself go and takes what every place brings without trying to turn it into a healthy private pattern of one’s own and I suppose that is the difference between travel and tourism.” - Freya Stark
For more on Asolo get your copy of the Veneto Green Travel Guide
Hidden Corners of Venice and the Lagoon
For me there are few places on earth as beautiful or as historically vibrant as Venice. True, the city is sinking under the weight of environmental challenges and mass over-tourism (don’t even think of visiting in the high season months), locals complain bitterly (rightly) about the disneyfication of their historical home town, many move further out to escape the tour groups. But for all that, it remains a magical, dreamlike city full of hidden corners, quiet neighbourhoods, and a place that truly rewards slow, gentle travel.
Here are a few of my favourite Venice & Lagoon highlights:
Giudecca
Venice is best enjoyed at a distance from its touristic heart. Wake up in Giudecca, an island nicknamed Spinalonga for its long thin shape, and you’re facing the centro storico across the water, but you’re a world away.
Known for Cipriani, a glamorous hotel (beloved of Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor) created in the 1950s by Giuseppe Cipriani, owner of the famous Harry’s Bar (a drinking spot favoured by Hemingway), and for the elegant Redentore Church, designed by Andrea Palladio, and now managed by Capuchin monks (frati) - the beautiful restored gardens of which can now be visited Thursdays through Sundays (take a good book, and slow down between the fig and pomegranate trees, or discover the hidden garden at the edge of the lagoon that fills with the scent of night jasmine come dusk). The medieval enclosed gardens, lovingly restored by the Venice Gardens Foundation, are an oasis for contemplation and spiritual renewal, and feature drifts of lavender and rosemary. The gardens are also a site for growing healing herbs.
The island is an otherwise humble neighbourhood of around 5,200 Giudecchini, as the local residents are called. It’s reached by vaporetto, and easily walked from one end to the other, stopping off at waterside cafes along the way. The pace here is slower, people stop to chat, there’s an air of self-sufficiency to the island.
What I love most about Giudecca is how unprepossessing it feels - yet just across from the hectic heart of Venice in all its glory. Here instead, you’ll find fishermen still tending their nets, volunteers growing tomatoes, herbs and courgettes in the vegetable garden of the ancient Sant’ Eufemia church, mallards and the occasional moorhen wandering in the Campo San Cosmo, and sense an artistic energy to the place.
Giudecca - once full of industrial factories - is increasingly residential and home to artists and creative souls. Villa Heriot, a neo-Veneto-Byzantine style estate, created in the 1920s, is a training centre for those working on the art of restoration and a cultural heritage institution - again with beautiful accessible gardens and views across the lagoon. CREA is a contemporary arts hub led by curator Pier Paolo Scelsi - its workshops and exhibitions connecting up with wider artistic events like the Biennale. The Art District of the island showcases the studios and work of artists and artisans on the island.
The island bursts with ochres, terracotta brick and salmon pink-hued crumbling buildings. The scents of lagoon salt and freshly-brewed coffee hit you as you walk the narrow streets. Giudecca is also home to the ‘Garden of Eden’, a storied tucked-away private garden, which inspired writers and creatives like Henry James, Marcel Proust, Rainer Maria Rilke and Jean Cocteau. The garden, envisaged in an English garden style full of elegant statues, roses, vine-covered pergolas, cypress trees, sweeping lawns and winding paths, is hidden behind tall gates.
Read A Garden in Venice (1903) by Frederic Eden for a glimpse into its past and creation.
To sit by the water’s edge, looking out over at honey-glowing Dorsoduro across the Giudecca Canal as dusk falls, is one of Venice’s great quiet pleasures.
Venice’s Silver Screens - Journey Back in Time
I have a love of old cinemas (that nostalgic theatre feel), and Venice is home to echoes of the silver screen past. If you’re looking for a novel way to connect with the real life of the city, slip into an old cinema with the evening crowd.
Cinema Giorgione (Cannaregio) in the Fondamenta della Misericordia area is a genuinely charming cinema in Venice.
Small, independent, and unapologetically local, it still shows arthouse films, original-language screenings and hosts retrospectives. The interior feels intimate rather than polished - more neighbourhood salon than multiplex. On winter evenings, people arrive wrapped in scarves, carrying the smell of the damp lagoon air mixed with wine and smoke. You step out afterward into fog, candlelit bars, and criss-crossing conversations.
The Casa del Cinema (Santa Croce) is cinephile-oriented and associated more with university life, essays, discussions, rather than old world movie glamour.
Join the queue and you’ll hear people speaking in different languages, nobody is in a hurry, and the animated conversations are rich in ideas.
One of my favourites, Cinema Astra (Lido) on the Lido di Venezia, is a beautiful Belle Époque style cinema, closely tied to the Venice Film Festival. Still operating, with a slightly time-frozen feeling - dark red curtains, old signage, wide foyers, it evokes the glamorous past of the city and the sense of cinema as a promise, of hushed communally-shared storytelling.
Chioggia - ‘Little Venice’
If you find Venice over-romanticised and you yearn for somewhere grittier to anchor your visit, head to Chioggia, the hard-working older sibling to the glamorous Serenissima. Once a roman settlement (Fossa Clodia) referenced by Pliny The Elder, it actually predates Venice.
Chioggia is more Adriatic. It’s full of fishermen, the waterside smells of seaweed mixed with diesel engine oil and cuttlefish. There’s a rawer energy to the place. It’s a fascinating place to visit early morning or late afternoon.
Wander the side streets behind Corso del Popolo. Televisions blare through open windows, cats curl up on old mopeds to sleep, plastic chairs sit patiently in narrow alleyways where lines of laundry hangs low enough to brush your shoulder. Walls are stained nicotine yellow, or bruised peach. The peeling shutters are sea-green.
Chioggia harbourside is all coffee and cigarettes mixed with sea salt. Early morning, the fish market (Mercato Ittico) shows off unfamiliar catches: moleche (soft-shell crabs in season), schie (tiny grey shrimp), spider crabs, and mantis shrimp. You step on wet stone that smells of brine and seawater.
Stop by Bar Caffè Europa (Campo Vigo) where coffee is drunk standing by the bar, or linger over lunch at restaurant El Gato for fresh seafood.
San Domenico church is lit with votives and resonant with hushed prayers from the seafarers, full of maritime hope and gratitude.
Most visitors stop to snap pictures on Canal Vena for Little Venice vibes, but look more closely and you’ll see the practicality at work, from the way the boats are tied with sun-warmed rope, to the rows of plastic chairs facing the water’s edge. Voices meld, jokes fly, all in dialect.
This isn’t the pretty picture-book Venice. It’s a real, hearty, working neighbourhood, and a different side to Venetian life.
To travel further in the Veneto and discover hidden corners get your copy of the Veneto Green Travel Guide.
A Language Island in the Heart of the Forest
The Foresta del Cansiglio is a vast beech-dominated woodland and pre-Alpine plateau straddling the Veneto and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions, extending across the provinces of Belluno, Treviso, and Pordenone. Known historically as part of the “Bosco da remi” (forest of oar wood) under the Republic of Venice, its rich timber was prized for making ship oars used by the Venetian Arsenal. The forest’s exceptional biodiversity includes extensive peat bogs and old-growth stands - characteristics that have earned it legal environmental protection today - and it remains one of Italy’s most notable forested landscapes for hiking, nature study, and traditional rural pasture land.
What fascinates me in particular about this area is that within this forested world lives the Cimbri del Cansiglio, a small ethnic and linguistic minority of German origin whose ancestors migrated from the Altopiano di Asiago and other German-language areas into northern Italy. They began settling in the Cansiglio region in the late 18th century, drawn by the abundant beech forests where they worked as boscaioli (woodsmen) and skilled wood craftsmen. The term tzimbar (from which their name derives) means “woodworker,” and the Cimbri became renowned for producing fine wooden objects and tools - such as scatoi, beechwood containers used for cheese and food storage - which were widely traded beyond the forest.
Small Cimbrian villages like Pian Osteria, Le Rotte, and Vallorch still retain vestiges of this culture, and today the Museo dell’Uomo in Cansiglio preserves the history, traditional crafts, and the Cimbrian language, a Germanic dialect that survives with only a few speakers but remains a focal point of regional cultural identity.
Curious to discover more of the region’s history, highlights and best experiences for slow travel in the Veneto?
From Venice and the Lagoon, to historic towns like Padua and Vicenza, literary retreats like Asolo, vineyards and lakes, mountains and forests, the Veneto Green Travel Guide (100 page detailed PDF guide) introduces you to the region through a green travel lens. It includes language, culture and identity, green travel tips, and itineraries based on time and on theme, along with sections on crafts, seasonal highlights and sustainable food as you travel. Plus a reading list to deepen your travels, and a directory of suggested places to stay that suit slow travellers.
In Case You Missed It
Take a slow train journey from snowy Prague to Ljubljana - full of bookish stops, history, culture and cosy cafés along the way.
Explore Europe’s Oldest Border and discover how language blurs across borderlands.
In Write Your Way Around the World find out What Readers Actually Want from Travel Writing Now, take the quiz to work out What Kind of Travel Writer Are You? and find plenty of reading recommendations for travel literature you’ll love.
Storycraft looked at cities as characters and examined the art and enduring resonance of the journey story from Homer to Kerouac and Cheryl Strayed.
Planning your travels for 2026? The Ultimate Green Travel Guide has you covered. With 100 inspiring adventures around the world - all focused on slow, mindful and regenerative travel - and full of green travel tips and advice this 200 page PDF ebook will inspire you to experience travel in a more meaningful way. Happy Travels!
Things I’ve loved this week
I appreciated this honest take on travel from The Conscientious Traveller - and why we should think differently about where we choose to travel to - it’s a thoughtful read.
And this on the joys of slow simple living from Chelsea made me smile:
And this essay on essentially finding your joy from Erica at Side Quest is just lovely and true. Love the questions she poses at the end.
Enjoyed these, and many, many more ❤️ Thanks to everyone who has commented, shared, restacked, subscribed and DMed recently - appreciate you all!
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If you’ve enjoyed this and found it helpful, consider sharing, restacking, commenting, subscribing or recommending. Thank you! 🗺️ 🌍💚
Happy Travels,
Laura
Laura McVeigh
Author, Travel Writer, Storyteller
lauramcveigh.com | lauramcveightravel.com | travel-writing.com | greentravelguides.world
Laura McVeigh is a Northern Irish novelist and travel writer. Her work is widely translated and her latest novel Lenny is set between the desert in Libya and the bayou in Louisiana. She has authored books for Lonely Planet, DK Travel, writing published by Bradt Guides, bylines in the Irish Times, Irish Independent, featured by the BBC, Newsweek, New Internationalist & many more. Former CEO for a global writers’ organisation, working with writers from 145 countries. She is founder of Travel-Writing.Com and Green Travel Guides. Laura writes on storytelling, travel writing and mindful travel on Substack.
P.S. Want help to develop your writing? Check out The Writer’s Toolkit for free and paid resources to get you writing, pitching and publishing your work.
Awesome work as always Laura. I dont know how you do it - so well researched and comprehensive and tight yet evocative prose. You have become my go-to on new destinations new and known. I am really loving the book recs, reminding me of already reads and intro'ing new authors, places and titles.
I really enjoyed this. Thoughtful, grounded and very true to the spirit of mindful travel. I’ve just been reading extracts from Freya Stark’s A Winter in Arabia. While some of her views feel controversial through a modern lens, I really enjoyed her curiosity, sharp observation and wit. It's lovely to see her woven into this piece.