Historical novel set in France (and Scotland)
Ten Great Love Stories set in VENICE
19th September 2024
Ten great love stories set in Venice. Venice, with its labyrinthine canals, ornate architecture, and a pervasive sense of enchantment, has long been a muse for love stories. The city’s unique atmosphere, a blend of romance and mystery, provides the perfect backdrop for passionate encounters and heartfelt declarations.
Whether it’s a whirlwind romance between tourists or a deep-rooted passion between locals, Venice’s magic seems to ignite the spark of love. The city’s beauty and atmosphere create an intoxicating elixir, making it the ideal setting for stories that explore the complexities and joys of human connection.
Here are ten of our favourite love stories set in the city.
A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant
It’s hard to imagine a more romantic real-life story than the long and forbidden love affair of the 18th-century Venetian nobleman Andrea Memmo and a half-English beauty named Giustiniana Wynne. Andrea Di Robilant’s A Venetian Affair is drawn in part from a cache of letters discovered by the author’s father in his ancestral palazzo on the Grand Canal. In 1753, his ancestor Andrea Memmo had been introduced to a lovely girl of uncertain station (illegitimate, although her parents later married). The Wynnes’ position was precarious enough in Venice’s rigid society, and Giustiniana’s mother took every step to prevent the young aristocrat from corrupting her daughter. But the two lovers began to meet in secret: exchanging letters through confederates and communicating in public through an elaborate code of nods and gestures. They even came within a few days of being married before further dark revelations about Giustiniana’s family put a permanent end to their hopes. Although Memmo went on to have an illustrious career in the dying Venetian Republic, it is Giustiniana’s astonishing later life that really captures the reader. A Venetian Affair provides both a rich picture of the times–including cameo appearances by Casanova–and a convincing account of an enduring passion.
The Glassblower of Murano by Marina Fiorato
Wonderful combination of mystery, historical intrigue and love, written by an English/Venetian author, which tells a story of passion, genius and betrayal linking the present and the past. Nora Manin decides to leave her fractured life in London to start again in Venice, and there begins to unravel the story of her ancestor, Corradino Manin, the greatest artist of glass that the island of Murano ever produced. Already established as a European bestselling novel, with over 100,000 copies sold in Europe to date.
A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena de Blasi
Fernando first sees Marlena across the Piazza San Marco and falls in love from afar. When he sees her again in a Venice café a year later, he knows it is fate. He knows little English; she, a divorced American chef traveling through Italy, speaks only food-based Italian. Marlena thought she was done with romantic love, incapable of intimacy. Yet within months of their first meeting, she has quit her job, sold her house in St. Louis, kissed her two grown sons good-bye, and moved to Venice to marry “the stranger,” as she calls Fernando.
This deliciously satisfying memoir is filled with the foods and flavors of Italy and peppered with culinary observations and recipes. But the main course here is an enchanting true story about a woman who falls in love with both a man and a city, and finally finds the home she didn’t even know she was missing.
A Year at Hotel Gondola by Nicky Pellegrino
Kat has never wanted to live a small life. She’s an adventurer, a food writer who travels the world visiting far-flung places and eating unusual things. Now she is about to embark on her biggest adventure yet – a relationship.
She has fallen in love with an Italian man and is moving to live with him in Venice where she will help him run his small guesthouse, Hotel Gondola. Kat has lined up a book deal and will write about the first year of her new adventure, the food she eats, the recipes she collects, the people she meets, the man she doesn’t really know all that well but is going to make a life with.
But as Kat ought to know by now, the thing about adventures is that they never go exactly the way you expect them to…
In My Lady’s Shadow by Siobhan Daiko
16th Century/Modern Venice:
Grappling her own demons and the after-effects of a disaster, Fern battles to keep hold of her sanity as she’s snatched back in time and lives the life of Cecilia, a young woman at the court of Queen Caterina Cornaro, near Venice, in the early 16th Century. Luca, a local architect, comes to Fern’s aid when Cecilia embarks on a passionate affair with the artist Zorzo. Echoes of the past manifest themselves increasingly in the present through a series of startling coincidences until past and present collide, throwing Fern and Cecilia into mortal peril.
Can Luca keep Fern out of danger and help her come to terms with her own past?
Venice in the Moonlight by Elizabeth McKenna
Carnival Time 18th Century Venice……
Considered useless by his cold-hearted father, Nico Foscari, eldest son of one of the founding families in Venice, hides his pain behind gambling, drinking and womanizing.
After her husband’s untimely demise, Marietta Gatti returns to her hometown of Venice in hopes of starting a new life and finding the happiness that was missing in her forced marriage.
When Fate throws them together, friendship begins to grow into love until Marietta learns a Foscari family secret that may have cost her father his life. Now, she must choose between vengeance, forgiveness, and love.
My Heart is in Venice by Helga Jensen
Venice was where it all began…
Libby and Will spent a glorious honeymoon in this magical city. They didn’t have much money, but they had a whole lot of love and a bright future ahead of them.
And Venice was where it all went wrong…
Two kids and twenty-five years later, they are struggling with money problems but somehow Will manages to fulfil his promise to Libby to take her back to Venice for their anniversary. This time, they are doing it in style and a masked ball awaits. But among the beautiful buildings and romantic canals, Libby learns that her husband has a secret that breaks her heart.
The trust is broken and the marriage is over. But there are decades of love and two grown sons between them.
Can they ever find their way back to each other or have they missed their chance forever?
The Casanova Papers by Kate Zarrelli
In Venice, Italy, a university professor and a young English teacher together curate an edition of Casanova’s memoirs and begin acting out his adventures. What could go wrong?
Ellie Murphy takes a contract teaching English at a school in Venice. There she meets the sexy enigmatic Professor Piero Contarini, from an ancient Venetian family, and agrees to help him in his work curating a new edition of the memoirs of the famous seducer, Giacomo Casanova. Taking their task seriously, they start to enact his adventures with each other, ecstatically revealing their own kinks as they do so. But who is watching them from the shadowy alleyways of this mysterious city?
The Little Venice Bookshop by Rebecca Raisin
When Luna loses her beloved mother, she’s bereft: her mother was her only family, and without her Luna feels rootless. Then the chance discovery of a collection of letters in her mother’s belongings sends her on an unexpected journey.
Following a clue in the letters, Luna packs her bags and heads to Venice, to a gorgeous but faded bookshop overlooking the canals, hoping to uncover the truth about her mother’s mysterious past.
Will Luna find the answers she’s looking for – and finally find the place she belongs?
Venetian Interlude by Rosemary Gemmell
Scottish art historian Livy arrives in Venice for a short break before picking up a cruise. The last person she expects to meet is Sebastian, the handsome half Italian, half Scottish guy she first met and fell for at university before their worlds diverged. Then after a gap of several years, they met for the second time three years ago at a friend’s wedding before parting again.
Now, Livy is still single and Seb is even more appealing and apparently unattached, both happy to renew their long friendship. But their unexpected meeting convinces Livy he is the only man she cannot forget. Will it be third time lucky for their relationship as they explore beautiful Venice together before time runs out.
Enjoy your Venice -based love stories! Any of your favourites we’ve missed, please add in Comments below…
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