If you’re hiring a car for your holidays in Italy or you’ve arrived there in your own vehicle, you may be wondering whether you can drive into Venice. Well, can you? Are there cars in Venice? Can you drive up to it? Let’s take a look at the basics today.
Venice is known as the Floating City or the City of Water (alongside many other titles). The city is effectively built on dozens of small islands. Instead of streets you have canals. Instead of cars, you have boats and gondolas. And nothing has changed in this regard.
As such, no, there are no cars in Venice. You can’t enter the city with a car and, frankly, we’re not sure how you would even want to. Instead, you can leave the car in the car park outside the city. You can use the Ponte della Liberta Bridge connecting Venice and Mestre by car and bus. But that’s it.
In the centre of the city, there’s a ban on vehicular traffic. And, again, even if there wasn’t, there isn’t any space for cars in the first place. Venetians prefer it this way. It’s perhaps odd for some of us who are so accustomed to having to rely on cars that a place can exist in a mode so different from ours, and yet they’re happy with that somehow. Crazy. Unlike in Amsterdam, you won’t find cyclists or scooters zooming around either.
Where to park in Venice?
If you are going to Venice by car then you can take advantage of the really many gigantic car parks before entering Venice near the train station – either on the islets of Santa Croce or in Tronchetto. How much do car parks in Venice cost? They are not among the cheapest in the world. The price for a day is around €30-32 in the better car parks and around €20 for 24 hours in car parks away from the main tourist attractions (i.e. on the Tronchetto).
If you want it cheaper, you can use the night tariff. Unfortunately, in that case, you’ll have to drive out of the car park in the morning. Some hotels have parking discounts, so do check out whether your hotel of choice has such an option.
If you have too much time on your hands, you can also park on the mainland in Marghera, as prices there are as low as €5 per day.
Of course, situations do happen when cars are ‘present’ in Venice. A pair drove into Venice in 2016 and nearly ran over one pedestrian, blaming their intrusion on Google Maps sending them this way. Which is, if anything else, frankly kind of impressive.
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