Teatro La Fenice

Teatro La Fenice tour tickets: an audio guide or a guide in English

You don’t have to book a time to walk round La Fenice. Our ticket, at €14, skips the line at the entrance and comes with an audio guide you download to your own phone, so you go through the foyer, the auditorium, the royal box and the Sale Apollinee at your own pace.

Over-65s pay €10.50, there’s also a reduced ticket at €9.20, and a family of two adults and a child pays €27, with a version for two children as well. Children up to 6 go in free. The ticket can’t be refunded.

If you’d rather someone explained it all, our guided tour in English, at €25, takes about an hour. You meet 15 minutes before the start, and you can cancel up to 24 hours ahead. The theatre’s own guided visits are only for groups that book together, and it doesn’t put groups together on the spot, so you can’t tag along with one on the day.

None of the Venice passes we sell includes the Fenice, so the visit is bought separately.

Teatro La Fenice visiting hours change from day to day

La Fenice is a working opera house, and visits fit around rehearsals and performances. It opens to visitors every day, normally from 9:30 to 18:00, but the theatre publishes the real hours one month at a time and warns they can change at the last minute. In October 2026, six days closed at 15:00 or earlier, four of them at 13:00.

The cuts all fall in the afternoon, which is why the morning is the time to go. Opera days can shorten the visit further, so check the hours the theatre publishes for the month before you set out.

You can take photos on the visit, for your own use, whenever no rehearsal is going on. Wedding and Carnival-costume photo shoots aren’t allowed, and nor are animals, apart from assistance dogs.

The Teatro La Fenice visit: SOCIETAS, the auditorium and the Callas rooms

You go in from Campo San Fantin, under the word SOCIETAS on the facade. When the theatre opened in 1792, its critics turned the word into an acronym, “Sine Ordine Cum Irregularitate Erexit Theatrum Antonius Selva”: Giannantonio Selva, the architect who won the competition to design it, built a theatre without order and full of irregularities.

Inside, after the foyer, comes the auditorium itself, and then the royal box, which began as the imperial box Selva built for Napoleon in 1808.

The Sale Apollinee are the theatre’s reception rooms. A lift goes up to them, and their café is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 16:00. The visit also takes in a permanent exhibition on the soprano Maria Callas and her Venetian years. The route can change when the stage or the rooms are needed, so not every visit sees every space.

Teatro La Fenice’s two fires, in 1836 and 1996

When it opened, the theatre had 174 boxes, all the same size. On 13 December 1836 a newly installed Austrian stove set it alight, and it burned for three days and three nights. The foyer and the Sale Apollinee survived, and the brothers Tommaso and Giambattista Meduna rebuilt the hall, which reopened on 26 December 1837.

Giambattista Meduna redecorated it again in 1854, and that was the auditorium lost on 29 January 1996. The theatre was closed for works and the canals around it had no water, so firefighters pumped water from the Grand Canal, and only the facade and parts of the walls were left. That fire was set on purpose, by two electricians from the firm doing the works who wanted to avoid a fine for running late. Italy’s highest court confirmed seven years for Enrico Carella and six for Massimiliano Marchetti.

Venice rebuilt it “com’era e dov’era”, as it was and where it was, the motto first used for St Mark’s Campanile after it collapsed in 1902. The new theatre was designed by the architect Aldo Rossi, who died in 1997 and never saw it finished. It was handed over in December 2003, Riccardo Muti conducted the opening week, and opera came back in November 2004 with La traviata.

Seeing an opera at Teatro La Fenice in the 2026–27 season

The season opens with Fedora on 13 November 2026 and runs until October 2027, with Madama Butterfly, Jenůfa, Carmen, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Norma and Adriana Lecouvreur on the Fenice’s own stage. A few productions, Hänsel und Gretel, Nozze istriane and Partenope, are at the Teatro Malibran, a different theatre in the city, so check which house your seat is in.

Shorts, sleeveless tops and flip-flops are never allowed in the hall. On ordinary nights the theatre’s two sources disagree: its website accepts a shirt and jeans, while the season’s price list asks men for a jacket and tie, so a jacket is the safe bet. Premieres call for a dark suit, and black tie is recommended on the opening night. Photos aren’t allowed during performances.

Walking to Teatro La Fenice from St Mark’s Square, and the high tide

La Fenice stands on Campo San Fantin, about 300 metres west of Piazza San Marco, so from the square you walk. On the water, vaporetto line 1 stops at Rialto, Sant’Angelo, Santa Maria del Giglio and San Marco (Vallaresso), all within reach on foot.

Straight from Marco Polo airport, the Alilaguna boats run on the orange line to Rialto or the blue line to San Marco (Vallaresso).

The theatre stands in one of the lowest parts of the city. When the tide reaches 100 cm you’ll want rubber boots to get there, and at 140 cm performances are cancelled.