It’s as romantic as a newlywed, but as easy to navigate as something scribbled by Escher on a bender. The first time you visit, you’ll be wooed by squeezed-in canals and charmed by arches.

You’ll watch from little bridges as gondolas glide by. You’ll spin dizzily through St Mark’s Square, not knowing which way to look. You’ll get hopelessly lost and you’ll love it. That’s Venice.

But what is there actually to do there after you’ve ticked off all the touristy bits and been ripped off in all the restaurants? In the hope of discovering a new aspect of the city, I chucked my guidebook into the canal and enrolled in a mosaic course at Orsoni, a local workshop that has been involved in making mosaics for four generations.

In the city that is one of the epicentres of the art, I learnt that proper mosaics are not made from broken tiles; they’re made from something called smalti. This is basi-cally opaque coloured glass that has the colour intensity and riddled-with-bubbles rawness of hard candy.

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Made by chucking sand and various other bits of boffin dust (cobalt, oxides, ground-up unicorn horns and so forth) into a furnace, it involves sweaty men swishing about mysterious workshops and guarding their secret colour recipes with a stern look and a red-hot poker. It’s all handmade using traditional techniques - because if it isn’t, it’s not proper smalti.

Walking into the workshop where all this takes place is like stepping back in time: no computers, no machines, no health-and-safety officers waving pencils at you.

Walking further into the colour library - the warehouse where slabs of smalti are stored - is even more intense. It’s like being in a fairy tale with Paul Smith as the fairy.

Worn and rickety wooden shelves line the walls, whispering dignity, history and tradition. Multicoloured slabs of smalti are racked on them like books. It’s captivating.

You’re welcome to your canals and gondolas - this is the most beautiful and enchanting thing I’ve seen in Venice. During my week-long course, I find myself sneaking into this room on the odd occasion, just to gasp at the rainbow charm of it.

Back at the workshop, we learn how to crack little bits of smalti into approximately desirable shapes, resting the piece you want to break across the pointy end of a wedge of steel, then giving it a clout with a sharp-edged hammer. It’s not easy, and there’s lots of chatter, laughter and shards of broken glass flying about.

The class has a maximum of six students. There are two instructors - one is a master at mosaics, but not so good at speaking English, the other a complementary vice versa. There’s a lot of one-to-one help and, being such a small group, we all end up involved in each other’s work. Sleeves are rolled up and a nice camaraderie develops.

The Orsoni workshop is located in the Cannaregio district of Venice, away from the main tourist route. On the first day, the staff take us to lunch at a brisk and bustling little trattoria with friendly smiles, paper place mats and delicious skip-dinner lunches for £6. We chat, we eat, we leave crumbs all over the table and we feel that we belong.

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