Vaporetto in Venice: tickets, passes and lines

How the vaporetto works in Venice

Buses from the mainland and the airport stop at Piazzale Roma, and from there on Venice is on foot or by boat. The vaporetto is the boat that works like a bus, with numbered lines, fixed stops and a timetable. ACTV runs it on the same tickets as its buses in Mestre and on the Lido.

Its main street is the Grand Canal, and line 1 works its way down it, calling on one bank and then the other. Other lines go round the edge of the city and out across the lagoon to Murano, Burano and the Lido.

The stops are floating pontoons, and you validate at the entrance to the pontoon, not on board. Some pontoons have a separate entrance for residents, who board first.

Vaporetto passes for 1, 2, 3 or 7 days

A pass gives you unlimited rides for 24, 48 or 72 hours or seven days, counted from the first time you validate it, so you can book it before the trip.

The ACTV vaporetto pass costs €30 for one day, €40 for two, €50 for three and €70 for seven. From the fourth ride in a day, the 1-day pass works out cheaper than paying ride by ride, and a day of the Grand Canal plus Murano and Burano and back easily makes four. The 1-day pass also covers the regional trains within the city of Venice, between Santa Lucia station and Mestre, which helps if you’re sleeping on the mainland.

Every pass covers the vaporetto lines in Venice, on the Lido and out to the islands, plus the ACTV buses in Mestre and on the Lido. It leaves out the airport routes, the Alilaguna boats, the casino boat and lines 16, 19 and 21. It arrives on your phone as soon as you book, and once bought it can’t be cancelled.

And none of the Venice passes includes the vaporetto. The Venezia Unica City Pass and the Museum Pass are museum passes with no public transport, and the Venice passes we sell bundle museum, basilica and boat-trip tickets. So the vaporetto pass goes on top of whichever you choose, and our page on Venice Pass and Venice’s museum passes compares them.

One vaporetto ride, and paying by card

A single ride costs €9.50 and lasts 75 minutes from validation, changes included, and the same fare works on the ACTV buses and the tram in Mestre. You don’t need to buy a ticket for it: tap a contactless Visa, Mastercard, Maestro or American Express card, or your phone, on the validator at the entrance to the pontoon. One card can pay for up to five people, as long as every tap is on the same validator within a minute. There’s no tap when you get off, and if an inspector checks you, you show the card you tapped or give its last four digits.

You can also buy a ticket from the machines and Venezia Unica ticket points at the main stops, in the AVM Venezia app (activate it at least three minutes before you board), or from the sailor as you get on, by card only. Bought on board, it comes already validated and costs the same €9.50. Holders of the EU Disability Card and wheelchair users pay €1.50, and their companion rides free.

Inspectors do check, and the fine for riding without a valid ticket runs from €50 to €300 under the Veneto’s regional law, on top of the fare. You can pay it to the inspector there and then.

Luggage on the vaporetto: the 150 cm rule

Each passenger can bring three bags free, as long as length, width and height add up to no more than 150 cm per bag. A cabin case of 55 × 40 × 20 cm comes to 115 cm and fits easily. A large checked case of 75 × 50 × 30 cm comes to 155 cm, and anything over 150 cm isn’t allowed on board at all.

A fourth bag within the limit needs one extra ticket, which covers up to three extra bags. When the boat is full, the sailor can refuse luggage, so with big cases avoid the busiest boats. A folded pram travels free, and an open pram or a wheelchair comes aboard when there’s room. Dogs ride free, one per passenger, muzzled and on a lead or carried.

If your suitcase is over the limit, the vaporetto won’t take it. From the station you can go by water taxi from Santa Lucia station to your hotel, €39, with another for the way back:

Line 1 down the Grand Canal, and line 2

Line 1 stops everywhere. From Piazzale Roma and Ferrovia, the railway station stop, it calls at 17 stops down the Grand Canal to San Zaccaria, among them Ca’ d’Oro, Rialto, Ca’ Rezzonico, Accademia and San Marco, then carries on to the Lido. From the station to St Mark’s takes up to 45 minutes. It doesn’t stop at San Giorgio Maggiore, the island church across from St Mark’s; line 2 does.

By day a boat comes about every 10 minutes and it gets very crowded, and this winter the evening boats leave Piazzale Roma every 12 minutes. Rick Steves, the American guidebook writer, suggests catching an empty line 1 at the end of the day from the station to St Mark’s, with his free audio tour of the Grand Canal in your ears. If you’d rather have someone point out the palaces in person, there’s a small-group guided boat tour of the Grand Canal:

Line 2 runs down the canal too, with fewer stops on it (Rialto, San Tomà, San Samuele, Accademia and San Marco). It’s a loop: the rest of the way it goes along the Zattere and past the Giudecca and San Giorgio. From 2 November 2026 it’s cut short for the winter: boats leaving Piazzale Roma between 9:18 and 16:30 end at San Marco Giardinetti, and between 16:42 and 19:54 they turn back at Rialto. Line 1 keeps running the whole canal.

When the tide rises above 95 cm (acqua alta), or in fog, ACTV changes the routes to a plan agreed with the city, so check the notices on the AVM website.

After midnight the night boat, line N, runs along the Grand Canal between the Lido, Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto until about 5:00, roughly every 20 minutes.

Murano, Burano and Torcello by vaporetto

Murano, the glassmaking island, is the easy one. Line 3 goes direct from Piazzale Roma (pontoon D) and the station, every 30 minutes from 8:20 to 18:20 this winter. The circular lines 4.1 and 4.2, which go round the city in opposite directions, also stop there, after Fondamente Nove and San Michele, the cemetery island, every 20 minutes.

For Burano and Torcello, take line 12 from Fondamente Nove, on the north shore of the city, which you reach from the station or Piazzale Roma on line 4.1 or 4.2. Line 12 stops at Murano Faro and Mazzorbo before Burano, but by day it doesn’t call at Torcello. This winter it leaves Fondamente Nove (pontoon A) at 10 and 40 minutes past the hour from 10:10 to 17:10, and comes back from Burano (pontoon C) at 25 and 55 past, from 11:25 to 17:55.

For Torcello, line 9 shuttles across from Burano, a five-minute crossing. The trip back from Torcello to Fondamente Nove takes about 45 minutes, by Rick Steves’s reckoning. Line 7, the summer boat from San Marco to Murano, doesn’t run this winter. Our page on Murano and Burano has the islands themselves and the boat trips that take you round them.

Traghetto: the €2 gondola across the Grand Canal

To cross the Grand Canal between bridges there’s the traghetto, a wider gondola rowed by two gondoliers, which takes you straight over for €2 a crossing, often standing. It isn’t run by ACTV, so the vaporetto pass doesn’t cover it. Fewer crossings work than in the past, especially in winter, and the most regular are Santa Sofia, between Ca’ d’Oro and the Rialto market, and San Tomà, both running in the daytime, with shorter hours in winter and on Sundays.

In the summer of 2025, videos selling the traghetto as a cheap gondola ride brought queues to San Tomà, and the gondoliers have asked people to use it to cross, not as a ride. The real thing, through the small canals, is on our gondola ride page.

Vaporetto and Venice airport

ACTV’s vaporetti don’t serve Marco Polo, and the passes leave out every airport route. By water you take the Alilaguna, a separate company’s boat with its own ticket, which reaches Rialto and San Marco. By road, buses run to Piazzale Roma, and the ACTV airport bus ticket covers buses and trams but not the vaporetto. All the options, with times and prices, are on our page on getting from Venice airport to the city centre.