Where to stay in Venice

San Marco is the smallest sestiere by area and holds most of what people come to Venice for: the Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Campanile, La Fenice, and the shopping streets between them. Nothing you want is more than a ten-minute walk, and vaporetto lines 1 and 2 stop at San Marco and San Zaccaria, so you can reach any other part of the city without changing boats.

The cost of that is the crowd and the price. Between mid-morning and early evening the route from the Rialto bridge to the Piazza moves at a shuffle, and the restaurants along it are the worst value in the city. Room rates are the highest in Venice and rise the closer you get to the water.

The compensation is the evening. The day boats leave around 18:00 and the district empties in about an hour, which is the strongest argument for sleeping here rather than visiting. If you book San Marco, take a room in the lanes north of the Piazza towards Campo Santo Stefano rather than on the waterfront, and check the floor: the Piazza is the lowest ground in Venice and the first place under water when the tide comes up.

Cannaregio runs along the north side of the islands from Santa Lucia station to the Fondamente Nove, and most of it is where Venetians live. There are fewer sights here than anywhere else in the historic centre, which is exactly why the rooms cost less and the restaurants are priced for people who eat in them twice a week.

Two things make it worth booking rather than merely cheap. The Jewish Ghetto, walled in 1516 and the origin of the word, sits in the middle of the district with its museum and its five synagogues. And the Fondamenta della Misericordia and Fondamenta degli Ormesini are the closest thing Venice has to a night out that is not a hotel bar, with tables along the canal until late.

The catch is the station end. Lista di Spagna, the street leading in from Santa Lucia, is a corridor of luggage, souvenir shops and menu boards in four languages, and plenty of hotels are on it. Book north of the Strada Nova, towards the Ghetto or the Misericordia, and you get the district everyone means when they recommend Cannaregio. From there San Marco is 25 to 30 minutes on foot and there is no shortcut.

Dorsoduro is the southern strip of the islands, and it splits cleanly in two. The eastern end, around the Accademia and the Salute, is the museum quarter: the Gallerie dell'Accademia, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Punta della Dogana within ten minutes of each other, and room rates to match. The western end belongs to Ca' Foscari university, and the prices in the bars drop accordingly.

The Zattere is the reason to book here. It faces south along the Giudecca canal, gets sun all day, and is the one long walk in Venice with room to walk two abreast. From the Ponte dell'Accademia you are fifteen minutes from Piazza San Marco, which is as central as anywhere gets without paying San Marco prices.

The thing to watch is Campo Santa Margherita. It is the best square in the city for a cheap drink and the worst place in the city to have a bedroom window, and Venice's own guidance flags it for late-night trouble. Book two or three lanes back and you keep the bars without the noise. Note also that the sestiere officially includes Giudecca and Sacca Fisola across the water, which are boat-only, so read the address before you book.

Castello covers the whole eastern third of the islands, and where you book inside it changes the holiday completely. The western strip, behind San Zaccaria and Santa Maria Formosa, is two minutes from Piazza San Marco and is as busy and nearly as expensive. Walk east past the Arsenale and it turns into a working neighbourhood: Via Garibaldi with its market stalls, laundry across the calli, and sit-down meals at prices that do not exist anywhere else inside Venice.

That eastern end is also the Biennale. From May to November the Giardini and the Arsenale pavilions are a walk from your door rather than a boat ride, which is worth real money if art is why you came.

The trade is distance. From Via Garibaldi or Sant'Elena you are a genuine 25 to 30 minutes on foot from San Marco, and the vaporetto along the Riva is not much faster once you have waited for it. Out of Biennale season the far end is quiet to the point of being shut: two restaurants open on a Monday in February, and nothing after 21:00.

San Polo is 35 hectares, the smallest of the six, and it is the middle of the map: ten minutes to the station one way, twelve to Piazza San Marco the other, both on foot and both over one bridge. That central position is the whole case for booking here.

The Rialto market is the second reason. Fish and vegetables from 07:30, shut by early afternoon, and still supplying restaurants rather than performing for cameras. Around it is the densest cluster of bacari in Venice, where a glass of wine and a couple of cicchetti standing at the bar comes to a few euro, which is the cheapest way to eat well in this city. The Frari, a few minutes west, holds two Titians and never has the queue the Basilica has.

The cost of being central is being on the route. The flow between the station and San Marco crosses the Rialto bridge and runs straight through the district, and prices rise sharply within sight of it. Book west, towards Campo San Polo or the Frari, and you get the same walking times with a quieter street.

Everything motorised in Venice ends at Piazzale Roma, and Piazzale Roma is in Santa Croce. Buses from the airport, trams from Mestre, the car park, the People Mover to Tronchetto and the cruise terminal: it is the easiest place in the city to arrive with a suitcase, and the only place in Venice that looks like an ordinary town, which is not a compliment.

Walk ten minutes east and the district changes entirely. Around Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio and the Fondamenta Rio Marin it is residential, quiet, and cheap by the standards of the historic centre, with Ca' Pesaro and the Natural History Museum for the days it rains. This half is genuinely worth booking.

The verdict is mixed because the two halves are sold under the same name and the listings do not distinguish them. A room at the Piazzale Roma end is chosen for the car park, not for Venice, and you will be surrounded by people arriving and leaving. Either half is 25 to 30 minutes on foot from San Marco, and the vaporetto down the Grand Canal takes about the same once you have queued for it.

Giudecca is the long island facing the Zattere across a 300-metre canal. It is administratively part of Dorsoduro and practically a different place: a working island with a boatyard, social housing, a couple of ordinary bars, the Redentore church, and at the western tip the Molino Stucky, a converted flour mill that is now the biggest hotel in the city.

What you buy here is space and the view. Rooms are larger and cheaper than the equivalent across the water, and from the fondamenta you look at the entire Venetian waterfront, which is a thing the waterfront itself cannot do. There are no day-trippers at all.

What you pay is the boat. Every trip out and back is a vaporetto with a wait at each end, four minutes of crossing bracketed by up to twenty minutes of standing about. Line N covers the night, so you will get home, but you will get home slowly, and almost nothing on the island is open late, so dinner usually means crossing back. With luggage it means a boat at both ends of the journey. Book it for a quiet second visit, not a first one.

Mestre is the mainland half of the comune, and it is where the waiters, the shopkeepers and a fair number of the gondoliers go home. For a traveller it is a normal post-war Italian city: a pedestrianised centre around Piazza Ferretto, two parks, ordinary supermarkets, and hotels at prices the island cannot approach.

The logistics are genuinely good. Trains to Venezia Santa Lucia take 11 minutes and run frequently, buses reach Piazzale Roma in about 20, Marco Polo airport is 20 minutes away, and you can park a car, which is impossible in Venice and expensive at Piazzale Roma. On a fixed budget, or with a family that needs two rooms, the arithmetic is hard to argue with.

The arithmetic is also not the whole story. Venice before 09:00 and after 19:00, with the day boats gone and the calli empty, is the reason to go to Venice at all, and staying in Mestre is choosing to miss both ends of it. Some of the saving comes back as train fares, paid toilets and the surcharge for sitting down at a cafe. If the choice is four nights in Mestre or two on the island, take the two.