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Visit Piazza San Marco after dark, explore the outer islands like Giudecca and San Giorgio, and support the city’s glassmakers, lace makers, and other artisans.

Visitors have a chance to enter The Boathouse for the first Refract glass arts festival.

If Netflix’s new glassmaking competition series “Blown Away” left you feeling inspired, head to this surprising hot spot for glassblowing and learn how to make your own masterpiece.

With impressive shows featuring glasswork and surrealist art, these are American museums worth traveling to in 2019.

Get fired up for a trip to France’s oldest crystal workshop, Saint-Louis Cristallerie.

Dale Chihuly learned to blow glass at Venini Glassmakers on Murano. That alone should be enough to send you to the island (a 45-minute waterbus ride from San Marco) for a visit to Venini. The factory has been making glass since the 1920s but glassmaking has been done on Murano since the 13th century. Remember, the real stuff isn’t cheap. And the cheap stuff (the glass you see in the shops around San Marco) probably isn’t real Murano glass.

Famous for its long history of handblown glassmaking, Murano sits just a few minutes’ ferry ride offshore in the Venetian Lagoon. The main attraction is the Glass Museum (Museo del Vetro), which recounts the history of glass through the centuries, with the largest focus on important pieces of Murano glass produced between the 15th and 20th centuries. You can also join a guided tour and catch a glassmaking demonstration here. When finished, do a bit of shopping for locally produced glass at some of the boutique shops. Also check out the Romanesque-style Church of Santa Maria and San Donato, which may or may not house the bones of a slain dragon under its boldly hued mosaic floor.

The Museum of Glass is in Tacoma, about a half-hour away from Seattle, and it’s well worth the trip for art glass enthusiasts. The permanent collection includes some Chihuly pieces, work by 20th and 21st-century artists, and a charming collection of sculptural pieces interpreting children’s drawings. The temporary exhibits often feature a Northwest theme, and a theater features a rotation of short films about glass art. The real highlight of the museum, though, is the Hot Shop, where resident glassmakers and their assistants blow glass all day long for the entertainment of visitors. Often, their work is being filmed, and a narrator is on hand to explain what you’re seeing. You can walk all around the Hot Shop via overhead walkways, and photography is allowed throughout the museum, so it’s a great opportunity for photographers as well. The museum isn’t huge and takes only a couple of hours to go through, so it’s an ideal destination for a rainy afternoon. But don’t miss the striking outdoor art, like the Chihuly Bridge of Glass, outside the museum (free).

Considering my 13-year-old friend had a collection of glass animals at home, I thought Murano, the island that’s home to Venice‘s traditional glass industry, was an obvious place to go. We enjoyed the glass blowing demonstration at one of the many, many Murano furnaces that offers them (and you will certainly be accosted with the opportunity straight off the water bus when you arrive...). And of course there was a lot of window shopping along the banks of the main canal, which is lined with traditional glassware shops and factories. But I think our favourite moment was seeing the boats arrive and depart with their skiploads of glass shards and fragments. It seemed to capture both the workaday nature of this most delicate of crafts, and also, I’ll be honest, the probably future of most of those fragile souvenirs you plan to take home...

The Shanghai Museum of Glass, housed in a former glassmaking factory, features ancient artifacts such as blown-glass hairpins from the Song Dynasty as well as modern glass sculptures by Chinese and international artists, many of them American. Take a glassblowing workshop and make a vase to bring home. 685 Changjiang Xi Lu, 86/(0) 21-6618-1970.