The high point in Venice’s social calendar, Carnevale is a masked extravaganza, and your chance to spend 12 days looking like the Phantom of the Opera. The world’s best-known baroque fancy-dress party, it’s as extravagant as Rio’s Carnaval is riotous, celebrating the approach of spring with refined gusto. Venetians have been celebrating Carnevale since at least the 15th century. Although it was banned from Napoleonic times, it was revived in 1979, once again staking its place among the world’s finest festivals.