In Assassin's Creed II, Ezio Auditore spends 1481 to 1488 in Venice, hunting a plot the game pins on the Barbarigo family and the Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia. He arrives by boat with Leonardo da Vinci at the Rialto, which the game rightly shows as a wooden bridge. The stone one you know was begun only in 1588. He joins Antonio's thieves, learns to climb from Rosa at the Frari, and kills the fictional merchant Emilio Barbarigo. At each stop you'll hear the game scene, then the real Venice, which was darker and stranger: a doge taken by plague, a general beheaded between two columns, and a Leonardo who came only once, for about a month in 1500. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by Ubisoft, and it has spoilers. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, roughly 3 kilometers from the gondola yard at San Trovaso to the Arsenale gate.

Before you set off

Allow about two hours, with 45 minutes of walking. Venice is flat, but you'll climb the steps of several bridges, including the big Accademia bridge over the Grand Canal, so it's hard going with wheels. St Mark's Square is packed from mid-morning, so start early. In the colder months high water can flood St Mark's, so check the tide forecast. The Doge's Palace and the churches have their own tickets and hours, so check before you go. The start is near the Zattere waterfront in Dorsoduro, and the Arsenale waterbus stop is a few minutes south of the finish.

Squero di San Trovaso

Stand on Fondamenta Nani and look across the Rio di San Trovaso. Opposite is a working gondola yard, a squero, with a sloping slipway down to the water and wooden sheds that look as if they belong in the mountains. It's private, so watch from this side.

We start with a jump forward, to the Carnival of 1486, because the game sets its Carnevale games here. Ezio's friends Teodora and Antonio bring him to compete for a golden mask, the ticket into the party of the doge, Marco Barbarigo. Ezio wins the contests. Then Silvio Barbarigo bribes the games master, and the mask goes to Silvio's bodyguard, Dante Moro. Ezio will steal it back; you'll hear why at the Doge's Palace.

Now the real yard. Its age is disputed: its own site says it dates from before the 1600s, another profile says the 17th century. So it dates from around 1600, and may not have been here yet in Ezio's day. The sheds look like mountain houses because the carpenters and their timber came from Cadore, in the Dolomites.

Silvio and Dante are invented. The Barbarigo were a real Venetian family that the game casts as villains.

Now rewind to 1485, and the plot that made Marco doge. Follow the canal north, then bear right to the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Inside, Carpaccio's painting of a miracle at the Rialto shows the wooden bridge Ezio arrived on, restored and back on show in October 2026. Cross the Grand Canal on the Accademia bridge and keep straight on into Campo Santo Stefano. About ten minutes.

Campo Santo Stefano

A wooden boatyard on a Venetian canal

Campo Santo Stefano is a long, open square. At its north end is the Gothic church of Santo Stefano. Find its carved doorway, by Bartolomeo Bon in 1442, and its visibly leaning bell tower.

Back to 1485. The game sets the Templars' plot in motion here at Santo Stefano. Ezio spots Carlo Grimaldi and Silvio Barbarigo and tails them through the city. Marco Barbarigo joins them, and then the Spaniard, Rodrigo Borgia, gives his orders. Doge Giovanni Mocenigo is to die tonight, and Marco will take his place. Silvio will supply the poison, and Carlo will give it.

Carlo Grimaldi is fictional, and so is the plot. Rodrigo Borgia was real, but in these years he was a cardinal and the vice-chancellor of the Church, in Rome. He was elected pope, as Alexander the Sixth, in August 1492. No record we know of puts him in Venice; that visit is the game's.

The church is the real thing. Augustinian friars rebuilt it in the 14th and 15th centuries. Inside is a wooden ceiling shaped like a ship's keel, and a wooden choir made in 1488, right in the years of the game. That leaning bell tower is Romanesque, over 60 meters high, and it tilts more than 2 meters.

The poison is ready, and Ezio needs to reach the Doge first. Follow the yellow signs for San Marco east through Campo San Maurizio and along the wide Calle Larga XXII Marzo, into St Mark's Square. The Clock Tower stands at the far end on your left, next to the Basilica. About twelve minutes.

Clock Tower, St Mark's Square

Face the Clock Tower above the archway into the Merceria. Find the great clock face, the Madonna above it, the winged lion of St Mark, and on the roof the two Moors who strike the bell, installed in December 1497.

In the game, Ezio and Antonio hunt for a way into the Doge's Palace. Every route is guarded. So they climb scaffolding onto the Basilica's roof, and from up there they spot Grimaldi with the Doge. They can't get in this way. The game includes this tower too, and its database repeats the legend that the clock's makers were blinded, then calls it probably false.

Here's the catch: in 1485 this tower didn't exist. Building began in 1496, and the tower and its clock were solemnly inaugurated on 1 February 1499. A statue of the doge of that day, Agostino Barbarigo, stood beside the lion until 1797, when it was destroyed at the fall of the Republic.

Just inside the Merceria is a small relief from 1841 of the Vecia del Morter, the old woman with the mortar. Legend says that on 15 June 1310, during the rebellion of Bajamonte Tiepolo, an old woman knocked a stone mortar from her window onto the rebels' standard-bearer. Her name is uncertain, and historians say the doge had been warned in time anyway. The real result mattered more. To punish the conspirators, Venice set up a special Council of Ten. It became permanent in 1335, and it grew into a feared, secretive power in Venice.

Antonio's thieves are about to light fires across the city, and Leonardo has built Ezio a way to fly. Walk past the front of the Basilica into the Piazzetta, toward the water, and stand between the two tall columns. About two minutes.