Santa Croce

This guide to the Santa Croce district in Venice starts with the one incongruous thing you'll notice here: cars, buses and headlights, impossible almost anywhere else in the city. It traces the name back to a church, said to date to 568 AD, that stood on the Grand Canal for over a thousand years before Napoleon's officials tore it down in 1806, leaving only the Papadopoli Gardens where it once stood. From there it follows the marshy district's quiet centuries until 1933, when a new road bridge to the mainland changed what this corner of Venice was for. Look for the garden's unmarked ground where the old church once stood.