Venice tickets and attractions: official prices and where to book

Venice has no single ticket and no single ticket office. The Doge’s Palace and the other Civic Museums belong to the MUVE foundation, the Basilica and the Campanile to the Procuratoria di San Marco, state museums such as the Accademia to the Ministry of Culture, the vaporetto to ACTV, and the gondola runs on a tariff set by the city council. This guide sorts the Venice attractions into categories, with the official prices, the right channel for booking and, where there is one, the online alternative with its price alongside.

Venice attractions in eight categories

Museums. The most visited is the Doge’s Palace, which is sold only as part of the St Mark’s Square Museums ticket (€35, together with the Museo Correr, the Archaeological Museum and the Monumental Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana). For Venetian painting there are the Gallerie dell’Accademia, for the 20th century the Peggy Guggenheim, for the 18th century Ca’ Rezzonico and Ca’ Pesaro. The picture is completed by the Museo Correr and the Clock Tower, the Glass Museum on Murano and the smaller museums devoted to Leonardo, music and Jewish history.

Churches. St Mark’s Basilica can only be visited with a named online booking (€10), and that ticket also gets you free entry for six months to around forty other Venetian churches. Outside that circuit are the Frari, the Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore: Titian at the Frari (€8), the Salute free to enter, Palladio at San Giorgio.

Islands. Murano for glass, Burano for its coloured houses and lace, Torcello and San Giorgio for mosaics and the Borges Labyrinth. Giudecca is six minutes by vaporetto from San Zaccaria, and the Lido is the city’s beach. The lagoon islands and the Lido are outside the access-fee area.

Squares, bridges and landmarks. St Mark’s Square is free, and so is the view of the Bridge of Sighs from the Ponte della Paglia and the Rialto Bridge and Grand Canal. The gondola has a municipal tariff: €90 for 30 minutes by day, per boat, not per person.

Districts. Venice makes sense on foot: Cannaregio and the Ghetto for neighbourhood life and the bàcari along the Misericordia, Dorsoduro for museums and the Zattere, Castello and San Polo for the Arsenale and the Rialto market. Staying in Mestre costs less and puts you ten minutes from Venice by train.

Theatres and shows. La Fenice can be visited by day with an audio guide (from €14) and hosts opera and concerts at night. Vivaldi concerts in churches and scuole grandi usually cost between €30 and €60, and the Carnival ends every year on Shrove Tuesday.

Transport. The ACTV vaporetto costs €9.50 for 75 minutes and €25 for 24 hours: if you take three rides in a day, the pass pays off. For the airport there are Alilaguna boats, ATVO and ACTV buses and fixed-fare water taxis.

Passes and combos. The MUVE Museum Pass (€50, six months) pays for itself with the Doge’s Palace plus one more civic museum. Combos sold online, such as Doge’s Palace plus Basilica, cost more but solve the problem of Basilica availability.

Official prices at a glance

Official prices are the ones published by the organisations that run each site; Tiqets prices are the starting prices we see on the platform. Both can change, so always check before you pay.

Two things the table doesn’t tell you. The Doge’s Palace admits holders of tickets without a time slot only from 12:00, so to get in during the morning you need to choose a slot. The Basilica, meanwhile, forbids resellers from selling the bare ticket: that’s why online you’ll find “hosted entry” at a higher price, useful when the official slots are gone.

The access fee, before you travel

On certain days of the year, set by the city council and concentrated mainly on spring and early-summer weekends, day visitors entering the historic centre between 8:30 and 16:00 must pay an access fee: €5 if you buy it by the fourth day before your visit, €10 in the last three days. Guests staying in accommodation anywhere in the municipality (Mestre included), children under 14 and residents of the Veneto region are exempt but must register; Murano, Burano, Torcello and the Lido are outside the area. The fee is not included in any pass and can only be paid on cda.ve.it. All the rules are on our access fee page.

How to use this guide

If you’re short of time, start with Venice in one day: an itinerary with real times, starting from Santa Lucia station or Piazzale Roma, in two versions. If you’re deciding what to see, Things to do in Venice gathers twenty attractions with an honest verdict, plus the free things, rainy-day ideas and what to skip. For the colder months there’s Venice in winter.

Every attraction page follows the same pattern: a box with address, hours, closures, official price and vaporetto stop; a table comparing the official channel with online offers; the practical rules on bags, dress and accessibility; and the frequently asked questions. Whenever we quote a price, we say whether it is official or from a platform. Who sells what, from museums to gondola agencies, is in Who sells tickets and tours in Venice.

Two rules of conduct apply everywhere in the centre: sitting on the ground, on the steps of the arcades or on bridges is banned, and so is feeding the pigeons, with fines of up to €500. For gondola rides there’s a dedicated guide at gondolatour.venice.it, and for water-taxi transfers see taxi.venice.it.

An independent guide

This site does not sell tickets and is not the official site of any museum or organisation. When an attraction can be booked on Tiqets or GetYourGuide we show the link and, if you buy through it, we may receive a commission that doesn’t change the price you pay. That’s exactly why we say clearly when the official channel is cheaper, as it is for the Basilica, the Peggy Guggenheim and the Campanile. Prices are checked against the official sources listed at the bottom of every page; if you spot something that has changed, write to us. The full conditions are in our Disclaimer and About us pages.