Across the Grand Canal from San Marco lies Dorsoduro, the quarter Venetians think of as their artistic side of town. It is calmer, greener in places, and full of painters, students and boatbuilders. This walk starts at the very tip of it, the old customs point where the Grand Canal meets the lagoon, then wanders west past a great plague church, two of the finest art collections in Italy and a working gondola yard, before turning north through the busiest student square in the city to finish at the Frari, home of Titian's most famous altarpiece. It is about two and a half kilometers in all, one of the most rewarding self-guided walking tours in Venice for anyone who loves painting, and it shares not a single stop with the crowded Rialto and San Marco route.

Before you set off

Give yourself two to three hours, and the better part of a day if you want to go inside the museums, because the Guggenheim, the Accademia and Ca' Rezzonico could each fill a morning on their own. Pick one or two to visit properly and enjoy the others from the outside. The route is flat, but it crosses several small bridges with steps, and the waterfront stretches can be breezy and exposed in winter. Directions in Venice work by landmarks rather than street names, so look out for the yellow signs on corners, which in this part of town point toward the Accademia, "per Rialto" and the Ferrovia, the train station. Late morning is a good time to start, when the light falls well on the Salute and the museums are open. Museum days and hours vary, so check before you go. In autumn and winter, the lowest pavements by the water can flood at acqua alta, so check the tide forecast. Venice has also charged a day-visitor access fee on certain dates, so check whether it applies on your date.

Punta della Dogana

Walk right out to the tip of the promenade, where the paving narrows to a point and water surrounds you on three sides. To your left is the Grand Canal, sliding in from the city. To your right is the wide Giudecca Canal, and straight ahead the open basin of San Marco, with the Doge's Palace and the Campanile across the water and the white church of San Giorgio Maggiore on its island. For centuries every ship arriving in Venice by sea had to declare its cargo at this point, and the long low building behind you was the sea customs house, the Dogana da Mar. Look up at its little tower. Two bronze figures on top of it hold up a golden ball, and on the ball stands the figure of Fortune, who turns with the wind as a weathervane. It is a perfect emblem for a trading city that lived and died by luck at sea. The warehouses fell out of use in the twentieth century, and today they hold a museum of contemporary art, converted by the Japanese architect Tadao Ando, who kept the old brick walls and timber beams. Sit on the edge for a moment and watch the vaporetti, water taxis and gondolas crossing. Then turn back along the Grand Canal side, and in about two minutes you reach the steps of the great domed church.

Santa Maria della Salute

Climb a few of the broad steps and look up. Santa Maria della Salute is one of the great sights of Venice, an octagonal church crowned by a huge dome, with giant scrolled buttresses, nicknamed ears by some, curling around its base. In 1630 plague swept through Venice and killed something like a third of the city's people. The Senate vowed to build a church to the Virgin if the city was spared, and when the epidemic ended, it kept its promise. Salute means both health and salvation, and the name carries both. The young architect Baldassare Longhena won the commission, and the church took more than half a century to finish. Building something this heavy on the mud of the lagoon was a feat in itself, and the foundations are said to rest on more than a million wooden piles driven into the ground. Every year on 21 November, Venice still keeps its side of the bargain. A temporary bridge of boats is laid across the Grand Canal, and Venetians walk over to light a candle here, then eat a traditional dish of smoked mutton and cabbage. Step inside if it is open to feel the light pouring down from the dome. Then follow the lanes west, keeping the Grand Canal on your right, over a couple of small bridges and past the brick front of an old abbey, about four minutes.

Peggy Guggenheim Collection

Punta della Dogana Venice

From the lane you see only a garden wall and a gate, but the palace behind it is one of the oddest on the Grand Canal. Palazzo Venier dei Leoni was begun in the eighteenth century by one of the city's noble families, who meant it to be enormous. The money or the will ran out after the ground floor, and it was left as a long, low stump of white stone among its tall neighbors. In 1949 it was bought by Peggy Guggenheim, the American heiress who had spent the war years collecting modern art in Europe. She lived here for three decades, opened her collection to visitors, and turned the unfinished palace into one of the best small museums of modern art anywhere. Inside are works by Picasso, Magritte, Kandinsky and Max Ernst, to whom she was briefly married, and some of Jackson Pollock's early paintings, whose career she helped launch. On the terrace over the water stands a bronze horse and rider by Marino Marini, arms flung wide. Peggy is buried in the garden, beside the graves of the dogs she called her babies. If you are not going in, look over the wall at the sculpture garden. Then carry on west along the lanes, about three minutes, to the square at the foot of the wooden bridge.