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Reporting on cities that have been attracting tourists for hundreds of years is both a privilege and a challenge. You can always write about history and gorgeous settings, especially in Rome, where I have lived for twenty years), but when faced with editors’ oft-repeated query as to what’s new and hot, I don’t always have an answer. In Italy things move at their own pace, and the restaurant you remember from your first trip there two decades years ago may well remain intact and open for business today.

But of all the beautiful, timeless cities in Italy, Venice is my favorite. While I hardly find it a chore to visit Milan and Palermo and other Italian cities for work, La Serenissima is where my family and I eagerly head every chance we get. We don’t need excuses to visit, though sometimes we have one: perhaps a new restaurant or a recently opened hotel, or maybe a blockbuster exhibit at Palazzo Grassi or the Biennale art show if it’s the year for it. And if you think that on your fourteenth visit to a city you would be blasé, think again. Every time we take the boat across the lagoon and head up the Grand Canal, we are as awestruck by the maze of glittering canals and the ancient palazzos’ faded pastels as the very first time we went.

Of course, depending on which season you visit in, the dream of Venice can quickly turn into a nightmare, especially when those narrow bridges and alleys are jammed with wall-to-wall tourists. But even then, if you know where to go, there’s another side to the city that includes near-empty squares, bridges from which only you and the occasional cat watch the water flow by and restaurants filled with locals.

Why go now? Given the chance to revisit one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the question you should be asking yourself is Why not?