Marco often says that Venice teaches you to slow down. It demands that you surrender your pace, abandon intention, and allow the city to guide you—listening to the hush of water against stone, the echo of footsteps in narrow calli. That insistence on presence shapes both his craft and his relationship with the city. For him, Venice isn’t a subject to capture but a dialogue, one that shifts subtly with the tide.

When he needs to think, he disappears onto a small boat somewhere in the centre of the lagoon, where silence is a kind of sanctuary. Other times, he escapes to Giudecca, the island with the city’s most cinematic skyline and a rhythm that moves at half-speed. Ask him how to experience Venice “like a local” and he won’t offer you a neatly packaged list. He speaks, instead, of people. Venice, he believes, is stitched together by relationships—conversations traded across counters and canals, the fisherman arriving before dawn, the barista who recognises your order by the sound of your footsteps, the artisans who carry the city’s memory in their hands. These fleeting exchanges, he says, are the language of the city.

Still, there are places Marco returns to again and again. He watches sunsets at Gelateria da Nico, a gelato balancing in his hand. He recharges at Palazzo Experimental, observing the ebb and flow of guests passing through its doors. For cicchetti, he remains loyal to All’Arco or Enoteca Schiavi—always choosing the crostino with tuna and leek. For risotto, he heads to Pensione Wildner, where the traditional risotto di gò tastes unmistakably of the lagoon itself.

And if he could show a visitor only one place? He’d still choose a classic: the Accademia Bridge at sunset, when the light folds itself lovingly around the Grand Canal. Some clichés, he admits, earn their reputation.