When you visit Venice, be sure to be nice to the folks who take you around the canals on the gondola.

Yeah, they are the kings, so the gondoliers are the kings of the canals.

Coming up guides from Italy give us insider advice for finding the age-old serenity of Venice,

even if the crowds of other tourists start getting in your way.

They call Rome the eternal city, because you can still walk the same pavement and even enter the same buildings as the citizens of ancient Rome.

Nothing brings you back to the spirit of what it was like to be in that city at that time, quite like being inside the pantheon.

And go back to the Renaissance and imagine the look on the face of Pope Julius II,

when Michelangelo revealed what he'd painted on the ceiling of the sistine chapel.

This great display of human bodies on the ceiling, it was enormously popular.

Get ready to really see Italy in the hour ahead. It's travel with Rick Steves.

Two thousand years ago, the word Rome was synonymous with the idea of civilization itself.

Today, his Italy's political capital and the spiritual home of the Catholic Church,

it's also a living, open-air museum.

Anyone can get a feel for its majesty through the centuries just by looking at the grandeur all around you.

Just ahead on today's travel with Rick Steves, we look at the artistic triumphs of Michelangelo in Rome

and we'll see how you can read the city's history in its great buildings and monuments.

Let's start the harm. A few hours away by high-speed train in Europe's best preserved city, Venice.

The city that once ruled the Mediterranean has now become a tourist mecca. You could call it an adult Disneyland.

The biggest complaint I hear from people who visit Venice is about the crowds of tourists

that can clog its streets and piazzas during the day.

But there are ways to experience something more real, more romantic, more legendary in Venice.

As a city without cars, Venice can offer some interesting options to help you understand

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