The Biennale ★★★

Every two years, Venice hosts the world's biggest and greatest exhibition of modern and contemporary art

Every two years, in the spring of every odd-numbered year (2015, 2017, etc.), Venice hosts perhaps the pre-eminent exhibition of contemporary art in the entire world, the Venice Biennale—or, to be precise, the Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte.

In 2015, the 56th annual Biennale art show officially runs May 9 to November 22—though events actually started in February.

Started in 1895, this international art exhibition now receives more than 300,000 visitors every year (well, every-other year).

In concept, it's a bit of a throwback to the old world's fairs and and expos focused on technology, in that each nation mounts its own show.

Between 70 and 80 countries usually participate, and each country gets a padiglione (pavilion) or exhibition space in which to show off their greatest contemporary artistic talents.

The traditional space, and core of the Biennale, is inside the Arsenale (the Renaissance-era—yet still functioning—navy yards) and the nearby Giardini Pubblici public gardens—way out on the eastern end of Castello—but increasingly shows are curated in spaces scattered all across town.

It also now lasts from the spring until late November, and has begun incorporating film, music, and dance (and those frequently continue in the even-numbered years as well).

The core program, however, is still the visual arts. Sometimes countries use the Biennale to mount a retrospective of a well-established living artist; sometimes they use it to highlight cutting edge works by a few of the hottest young talents.

It's invariably interesting, and with so many hundreds of artists (the official expo usually has around 100, but plenty of smaller, unaffiliated shows pop up across town) and thousands of works on display, you're bound to like at least some of it.

Keep in mind this is modern art, so there is far more video art, oddball sculptures, and high-concept installation pieces than your traditional, straightforward paint-on-canvas or block-of-marble-pleasingly-carved type of art.

This can make for a wonderful vacation from all the Old Masters in Italy's museums, but it can also lead to potential damage to your peepers from all the inevitable eyeball rolling.

(Last time I attended, the Arsenale's first large space featured a gargantuan chandelier, maybe 20 feet across and 30 feet high, which hung from the center of the ceiling all the way down until it nearly brushed the floor, glittering slightly in the gloom. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be made entirely from shrink-wrapped tampons. Ah, art.)

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