This centuries-old palazzo feels more like a stylish home-stay than a hotel. Bedrooms are either painted with a lick of orange or with fat, forest-green stripes (an echo of those worn by the city’s gondoliers) and come with stony, flower-strewn balconies looking out over the canal. It’s a steal.

We’re totally enamoured with this romantic bolthole. It’s an old-school boutique hotel with just five rooms – each decorated with chandeliers, oddball furniture and sensual fabrics – based in Dorsoduro, an area known for pulling a young crowd and its panoply of affordable restaurants.

OK, it’s not on Venice’s mainland, but hear us out. This boutique wine hotel is not only surrounded by actual vineyards and blessed with a stonkingly delicious farm-to-table restaurant, but the vaporetto stop is just 100 yards away meaning you can get to the main hustle in just over half an hour.

This hotel is a real mishmash of interior design styles. Some rooms are gilded with gold and upholstered in satin, while others (the more recently renovated) are contemporary crash pads, so make sure you specify which you’d prefer when booking. The St. Angelo vaporetto stop is conveniently located just around the corner.

A stay at this creaky little family-run B&B is like visiting grandma’s house, providing your grandma is a collector of Italian antiques, that is. B&B San Marco prides itself on its non-touristy credentials. It’s in the less-visited Castello neighbourhood just five minutes from Piazza di San Marco – not the city’s most appealing attraction but a good base for heading elsewhere.

From the outside this upscale hostel has all the hallmarks of old Venice – artfully hewed stony colonnades, columns and airy vaulted ceilings – but inside it’s like a white-washed, 21st-century Stockholm hangout. Expect to find neon light installations and Bauhaus-style sofas, as well as a balcony overlooking the canal.