Private Cruise: San Giorgio Maggiore and San Lazzaro degli Armeni Island

Admire two gems of the Lagoon of Venice: San Giorgio Maggiore and San Lazzaro degli Armeni islands.

Get picked up right at your Venice hotel to begin your private visit to two of the under-appreciated islands in the Venice Lagoon, San Giorgio Maggiore and San Lazzaro degli Armeni.

Looking at the lagoon, from St. Mark’s square, the white shape of a classical temple appears surrounded by the waters. It is San Giorgio Maggiore Church, one of the Palladian buildings in Venice, on San Giorgio island. Also known in the ancient times as the 'cypresses island,' it was first a settlement of a Benedictine community. Far from the crowded St. Mark’s Square, the island offers a breathtaking sight from the top of the bell tower, the façade that Venice showed to her visitors coming from the sea.

Then head for a little jewel of the lagoon, San Lazzaro degli Armeni. This island, dedicated to San Lazzaro, patron saint of the leprous, was first a leper hospital. After a few centuries of decay, at the beginning of the 18th century, a community of Armenian monks settled here. They turned the old buildings into a monastery so that the island became an incredible cultural center opened in 1789, important for its collection of books and for typography.