72-hour vaporetto ticket: €45 for three days on the lagoon

What the ticket costs

The 72-hour vaporetto ticket costs €45 per person. ACTV prices travel by time rather than by distance, so the fare buys three days of the whole urban network: line 1 down the Grand Canal, the express line 2, the boats out to the islands and the buses on the mainland.

Against the shorter durations the arithmetic is blunt. Two separate 24-hour tickets already cost more than the three-day ticket, so it wins as soon as your third day holds a single crossing. Against single rides it pulls ahead from the fifth journey.

From the fourth day the seven-day ticket takes over: it costs a little more than the 72 hours and buys four more days. Every duration side by side, with what each one leaves out, is on the vaporetto price overview.

How the 72 hours are counted

The clock starts at your first validation at the landing stage, not when you buy and not at midnight. Validate at 16:00 on a Friday and the ticket runs until 16:00 on the Monday. Those are three real days rather than three calendar days, which is why the arrival evening and the departure morning of a short break usually both fit inside them.

You validate at the start of every journey and again at every change of boat. Within the 72 hours the conditions of carriage allow you to interrupt a journey and pick it up later, and they set no rule about travelling in one direction: hold the ticket to the white-and-yellow reader at the landing before you board, every time.

Three days is also enough for an unhurried island day. Line 12 leaves Fondamente Nove for Murano and Burano from 04:20, with the last sailing out to the islands at 22:25, and the crossings need no extra fare because Murano, Burano, Torcello and the Lido all lie inside the urban fare zone. The stops and the timings are on our pages for Burano and Murano.

Rolling Venice for under-30s

Travellers between 6 and 29 pay a different fare for the same three days. The Rolling Venice card costs €6 and is sold at the Venezia Unica ticket offices; with the card, the 72-hour ticket costs €27 instead of €45. Even counting the card itself, that stays below the standard three-day ticket.

The card is a concession, not a different product. The reduced ticket covers exactly the same network, runs for the same 72 hours from first validation and carries the same exclusions, and the Aerobus supplement can be added to it in the same way. The one practical condition is the counter: the card is sold at the Venezia Unica ticket offices, so allow a few minutes at a desk when you arrive.

The airport stays outside

No ACTV timed ticket covers Marco Polo Airport. The tariff page excludes every journey that starts or ends at the airport, and it excludes the Alilaguna lines, ACTV lines 16 and 19 and the Casinò line from all five durations.

One bridge exists. Bought together with the timed ticket, the Aerobus supplement costs €7 for one airport journey or €13 for both, and it carries you on the ACTV Aerobus between the airport and Piazzale Roma. On its own the Aerobus ticket costs €10 one way and €18 return, and a combined ticket at €18 adds 90 minutes on the water network to the airport run.

By water the airport is served by Alilaguna, a separate company with its own fare of €18 one way, while the ATVO express bus reaches Piazzale Roma in 20 minutes for €10. Journey times, where to board and what each option includes are set out on Marco Polo Airport to Venice.

The three-day ticket carries no train validity either. The official description of the 2, 3 and 7-day tickets names the water network, the mainland and island buses, the tram and the People Mover, and nothing else; the regional-train component belongs to the ACTV Venezia Daily Pass alone, which is the subject of the 24-hour ticket.

Buying and collecting the ticket

Booked online, the ticket reaches you as a voucher by email with a PNR code printed beneath the QR. In Venice you enter that PNR at any Venezia Unica or ACTV machine and the machine prints the ticket; the QR itself is not scanned. Vela, the sales company of the transport group, runs 110 machines and 25 staffed sales points across the city, so a machine is rarely further away than the next landing stage. GetYourGuide is one of the platforms ACTV lists as authorised to sell its travel cards.

Because validity starts at the first validation rather than at purchase, the voucher does not pin you to a travel day. The booking itself is firm: the ticket is nonrefundable and cannot be rescheduled, so check the duration and the number of travellers before you pay. The whole sequence, from the voucher to the reader at the landing, is on buy vaporetto tickets online.

There is also a route without a voucher. The ACTV readers take contactless bank cards and wallets directly: the first tap on the water costs €9.50, and the system caps the same card at €25 over 24 hours, €35 over 48 and €45 over 72, so the three-day fare is reached the same way from the other end. Up to five people may travel on one card when all five taps fall inside a minute at the same reader. You tap in at every boarding and there is no tap out on the boats. This route does not work for the airport lines or the regional trains. Crews sell tickets on board by card as well, though not on the tram or the People Mover.

Who the three days suit

Three days is the length of the standard Venice break, and the ticket is cut to that shape rather than to a sightseeing programme. Four cases make it the obvious buy:

• A three-day stay with an island day. Grand Canal on the first day, Murano and Burano on the second, Torcello or the Lido on the third. That is well past the five rides at which the ticket pays for itself.
• Families. Children travel free until their sixth birthday. From that birthday the adult fare applies, because the vaporetto system has no standard child discount.
• Travellers under 30. Rolling Venice brings the same three days down to €33 including the card.
• Anyone based on the Lido or on the mainland. The fare covers the Lido and Pellestrina buses, the buses in Mestre and Marghera, the tram and the People Mover between Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto.

It is the wrong ticket in two situations. For two days in the city, or for three days you mean to walk, the 48-hour ticket at €35 or a few 75-minute tickets will cost you less: Venice is compact, and a good many routes are quicker on foot than on the water. For four days or longer, the seven-day ticket at €65 is the cheaper unit. The full decision ladder, duration by duration, is on vaporetto tickets and passes.

What the ticket covers

The three-day ticket covers the same network as every other ACTV duration. Nothing on the left needs a supplement; everything on the right needs a separate ticket.

The fares, validity and carriage rules on this page follow the official ACTV tariff and conditions of carriage published by AVM, the operator of Venice's public transport, together with the published ACTV water bus timetables and the Venezia Unica sales network.