My experience of departing from VCE is somewhat limited and in most of the flights out of there the plane followed the route as per the screenshot below:




Which wouldn't give you any views at all of the city. Landing, on the other hand (see the little plane in the screenshot) gives good views if sat on the right-hand side.

BUT.

This is true for flights to Mitteleuropa/Scandinavia, or so it would seem. And indeed my flights had been to ZRH, CPH or BER.

There's no flights scheduled from North America to VCE right now, so can't play them back on the cheap version of flightradar. There's some data on flightaware but the GPS tracking is somewhat off, for it implies that the plane took off from a swamp north of Tessera. Still, assuming that the route is similar, at least in its initial phase, to the VCE-LHR routing, then we see this:




So a take-off to the north, then a right-hand turn, over Cavallino and the beaches, then a climb between the airport and Murano and off it goes. So assuming this is what UA169 will do on the day, if you're sat on the right-hand side you'll see the city from afar on the first turn and if sat on the left-hand side you'll have a closer look on the second turn. As long as it's not cloudy and so on, and assuming it follows this route and I haven't made any daft mistakes.