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One of the best things about Venice is its world-class art. One of the worst things about Venice is that every tourist in the visible universe agrees with this. From January to December the principal galleries and art-spaces of the city are thronged with millions of sightseers, standing three-deep in front of Giorgione’s Tempest in the Accademia, shuffling endlessly and dutifully before the Tintorettos in the Doge’s Palace.

A lost cause, then? Not necessarily. The artistic patrimony of Venice is so inexhaustibly bountiful that, armed with a little forethought, a fairly flexible timetable, and a willingness to venture off the beaten track, the traveller can still experience a frisson of truly spiritual and solitary artistic pleasure, away from the Slovenian day-trippers and American art-history students.

First, the Frari, or, more properly Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, in the San Polo district of the city, quite near the Rialto. The drab, squat, redbrick exterior of the 14th-century sub-Gothic church contrasts starkly with the artistic riches that lie within, which is a good thing, as it means the Frari is largely bereft of the idly curious. The church is especially empty on hot summer afternoons (the Frari is open 9 till 6 Monday to Saturday).

For many people, the chief jewel of this Franciscan church will be Titian’s awe-inspiring Assumption, a painting which moved Richard Wagner to immediately write Die Meistersingers. But there are plenty of other gems, among them the harrowing statue of a geriatric Saint Jerome by Alessandro Vittoria, said to be modelled on an aged Titian; the Bellini Triptych (of which Henry James said: ‘nothing in Venice is more perfect than this’); the famous choir stalls (which James Lees-Milne reckoned ‘the most beautiful in the world’); and the Pesaro altarpiece, again by Titian, for which the artist’s pregnant and soon-to-die wife Celia sat as a model. On a slightly less elevated note, lovers of early 80s English electropop should note the magnificently melancholy tomb of the neo-classical sculptor Canova, designed by the artist himself; it was the inspiration for the front cover of Joy Division’s Closer album.

Just around the corner from the Frari is the Grande Scuole di San Rocco. Not exactly unknown to art buffs, because of its Renaissance treasures, the greatest of the five charitable schools of Venice is nevertheless comparatively untouristed, perhaps because it’s absolutely freezing in winter and rather sweltering in summer. So take a lot of jumpers, or a lot of water, and you can enjoy the Scuola’s sixty-two paintings by Tintoretto in the nearest Venice comes to solitude (admittedly not very near). The school is open 9 to 5.30 in summer, 10 till 4 in winter.

From here it’s a very short vaporetto-hop to Ca D’Oro. Once a hugely celebrated must-see on every tourist itinerary (Ruskin raved about it), in recent years the ‘Golden Palace’ has become relatively obscure, almost neglected. If visitors come here at all, they zip straight to the second floor for the celebrated view of the Grand Canal, then nip off again in pretty short order. What they miss is Mantegna’s magnificent Saint Sebastian, with its haunting inscription ‘nothing but God endures, the rest is smoke’. They also miss what has been termed the most copied landscape on earth, Guardi’s picture of the Piazetta. And even the most assiduous of art lovers seem to skip past the small, beautiful, anonymous sculpture of A Centaur and Achilles on the ground floor, although it’s arguably the most obliquely erotic artwork in the city.

It might seem hard to believe that the church of Santa Maria della Salute could be missed by anyone. But it is. Of course everybody has a look at the scrolling buttresses and grandiloquent dome - you can’t fail to see them, squatting as they do on the prominent point of land, the Punta della Salute, at the end of the Grand Canal. But few people venture inside Longhina’s shining Baroque edifice. What they go without is a series of vigorous ceiling panels by Titian, a famous Flemish tapestry, the Whitsunday Celebration, and, tucked away at the back, a top-of-the-Premiership, copper-bottomed, world-class masterpiece, Tintoretto’s Marriage at Cana.

To make the Salute even more of a treat, directly outside the church there’s a traghetto, or public gondola, which will return you in style to Harry’s Bar near the Piazetta, where you can have a superbly restorative Bellini.

If all this Renaissance and Baroque art gets a bit overripe, when you’re bored of the endless Madonnas and Saints, then take a short walk up the canal from the Salute to the most agreeably-sited modern art museum in the world, the Peggy Guggenheim. Carved out of a bungaloid white marble palazzo, the Museum houses an exquisite collection of Pollocks and Picassos, Braques and Brancusis, refreshingly different from the Old Masters. The Guggenheim is open all year round, daily except Tuesday, from 11 until 6. And when the Guggenheim’s salons and gardens get too crowded, as they can in summer, stroll around the streets and squares nearby: they’re full of small private modern art galleries, with some interesting and exuberant contemporary art.

Finally, Torcello. This dusty isle at the northern end of the lagoon was where the first Venetians settled at the beginning of the Dark Ages, before upping sticks and moving to the less malarial island of Venice proper, around the tenth century. What the soon-to-be Venetians left behind was a lot of rubble, a lonely church, and one quite decent restaurant (run by the Harry’s Bar people). None of these would be sufficient reason to make the hour-long vaporetto journey across the lagoon: the reason to come here is the interior of Torcello’s ancient cathedral, with its startling mosaics, like the Last Judgement at the west end, and the Madonna Teotoca (‘God bearer’), on the opposite wall.

The latter is considered by some the noblest monument in the entire lagoon, ‘never to be surpassed’ as James Morris put it. The large silvery tear that slides forever down the Madonna’s infinitely sorrowful face is undeniably affecting.

Once you’ve scoped out Torcello cathedral there’s not much else to do in the little islet. You can wander among the scattered ruins of the deserted city, or look at the old stone chair, the Throne of Atilla, parked in the piazza, or take a desultory and over-priced lunch at the Harry’s Bar offshoot. Or you can just jump straight back on the vaporetto. But maybe it’s better to do what Mr and Mrs John Ruskin did on their holiday in 1850: have a sunny Torcello picnic. Stock up on supplies before you depart, and you can munch panini and salami, and drink Chianti and prosecco, while watching stately white yachts pass down the thousand-year-old Torcello canal. Perfetto.

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