The Stones of Venice is the three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853.
The Stones of Venice examines Venetian architecture in detail, describing for example over eighty churches. Ruskin discusses architecture of Venice's Byzantine, Gothic, in addition to Renaissance periods, and provides a general history of a city.
Ruskin had visited Venice before, but he produced two visits to Venice with his wife Effie specially to research the book. The first visit was in the winter of 1849-50. The first volume of The Stones of Venice appeared in 1851 and Ruskin spent another winter in Venice researching the next two volumes. His research methods forwarded sketching and photography by 1849 he had acquired his own camera so that he could do daguerreotypes.
Various shortened editions of the book create been published, including one edited by J. G. Links published in the USA in 1960.