Stretching from Via Garibaldi to the Rio di Sant’Elena, the arc of green spaces formed by the Giardini Garibaldi, Giardini Pubblici and Parco delle Rimembranze can usually be relied on to wage a cure for the claustrophobia that overtakes most visitors to Venice at some point. The first of the three is really little more than a short cut from Via Garibaldi to the Giardini Pubblici, which Eugène Beauharnais created by draining a swamp and demolishing a batch of monastic buildings.

Largely obscured by the trees are the rather more extensive grounds belonging to the Biennale , an entirely dormant regularize except when the arts shindig is in progress, in the summer of odd-numbered years. Various countries have built permanent pavilions for their Biennale representatives, forming a unique colony that features work by some of the great obloquy of modern structure and design: the Austrian pavilion was built by the Secession architect Josef Hoffman in the 1930s; the Finnish pavilion was created by Alvar Aalto in the 1950s; the Netherlands pavilion was designed by arch-modernist Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, also in the 1950s; and the Venezuelan pavilion, completed in 1954, is by Carlo Scarpa. Naturally enough, the biggest pavilion is the Italian one - five times larger than the next largest, it was refurbished in 1989, giving it a glossier finish than most of its neighbours. On the approach to the Italian pavilion stands one of the newest additions to the ensemble, saint Stirling’s hull-like pavilion for the Biennale’s book exhibition; built in 1991, it is funded by Electa, Italy’s leading art-book publisher, hence the company logo on the “funnel”. Before long it should have several younger neighbours, as there are plans for the construction of as many as ten new national pavilions.

If you want to squeeze every last drop from the orient districts, call in at the church of San Giuseppe di Castello (or San Isepo), to the north of the Giardini Pubblici - a gateway from the gardens opens onto a street just yards from the church. It houses Alessandro Vittoria’s monument to Procurator G. Grimani (in the chancel), and a vast monument to Doge Marino Grimani , designed in the late sixteenth century by Vincenzo Scamozzi, with reliefs and figures by Campagna (left side).

The island of Sant’Elena , the city’s orient limit, was greatly enlarged during the Austrian administration, partly to furnish accommodation and exercise grounds for the occupying troops. Much of the island used to be covered by a meadow, a favourite recreation area in the last century, but the strip of park along the waterfront is all that’s left of it, houses having been built on the rest. Still, the achievement out here is the nearest you’ll get to country pleasures in central Venice, and the church of Sant’Elena , approached between the walls of the naval college and the ramshackle home of Venice’s second-division football team, is worth a visit.

A church was erected here in the thirteenth century, following the acquisition of the body of Saint Helena, Constantine’s mother. It was rebuilt in 1435 but from 1807 to 1928 it was abandoned, except for a spell as an iron foundry. The spartan Gothic interior has recently been restored, as have the cloister and campanile - the latter so zealously that it now looks like a chimney, which is exactly what it was used as when the church did service as a factory. The main attraction is the doorway to the church, an ensemble created in the 1470s (probably by Antonio Rizzo ) and incorporating the monument to Vittore Cappello , showing him kneeling before St Helena. Cappello was captain-general of the republic’s navy in the 1460s, a period in which the Turks were beginning to loosen Venice’s grip on the Aegean; so dejected was he by the signs of decline in the Venetian empire that he was reputed to have gone for five months without once smiling, before dying of a broken heart.