Venice Cruise Terminal: Which Terminal and How to Get Into the City

Which Venice cruise terminal does your ship use?

Law Decree 103 of 20 July 2021, converted into Law 125 of 16 September 2021, declared the St Mark's Basin, the St Mark's Canal and the Giudecca Canal waterways of cultural interest and banned transit from 1 August 2021 for any ship with at least one of four characteristics: gross tonnage above 25,000 GT, waterline length above 180 metres, height above the waterline above 35 metres (vessels with mixed sail and engine propulsion excepted), or manoeuvring fuel with a sulphur content of 0.1 per cent or more (Commissario Crociere Venezia, 2026).

Stazione Marittima stays open and takes every cruise ship the ban does not catch, which in practice means the smaller and expedition-sized vessels. Anything larger goes to the temporary moorings the same decree ordered: the Liguria quay inside the PSA Vecon terminal and the Lombardia quay inside the TIV terminal, both at Porto Marghera, plus a quay at Isola Saloni in Chioggia added by Legislative Decree 68 of 16 June 2022. The Fusina ro-ro terminal was adapted for dual use and gives two of its four berths to cruise ships, with passenger, baggage and provisioning flows kept apart from the lorry traffic (Commissario Crociere Venezia, 2026).

The decree allows up to five temporary moorings in all, and two further berths plus a new passenger station are planned on the north side of the Canale Nord. Your cruise line's own documents remain the only reliable guide to which of these berths your ship has been given.

Getting from Stazione Marittima to Piazzale Roma and San Marco

The People Mover is the link out of Marittima. It is an automated cable-hauled monorail running Tronchetto to Marittima to Piazzale Roma, 822 metres end to end and about 7 metres above ground, with two trains carrying 200 people each and a capacity of 3,000 passengers an hour (AVM, 2026). A single one-way ticket costs 1.50 EUR. From April to October it runs 07:00 to 23:00 on weekdays and 08:00 to 22:00 on Sundays and public holidays; from November to March, 07:00 to 23:00 on weekdays and 08:30 to 21:00 on Sundays and public holidays.

At Piazzale Roma you join the waterbus network. A standard 75-minute rete unica ticket costs 9.50 EUR and covers the waterborne network, the mainland buses, the tram and the People Mover, though not waterbus routes 16 and 19, the Casino route, any Alilaguna service, or journeys to and from Marco Polo Airport (ACTV, 2026). It has to be validated again every time you change vehicle. If you expect more than two waterbus journeys in the day, the 24-hour Venezia Daily Pass at 25.00 EUR works out cheaper, and the 48, 72 and 168-hour tickets cost 35.00, 45.00 and 65.00 EUR. Holding any rete unica ticket also means no supplement on the People Mover.

What if my ship docks at Fusina or Marghera?

A berth at Marghera or Fusina puts you on the mainland, and the crossing becomes part of the day rather than a detail at the end of it. Terminal Fusina runs a scheduled boat, line 16, from Fusina to Zattere in the historic centre. It operates all year, takes 25 to 30 minutes on average, and costs 10.00 EUR one way or 15.00 EUR return at full fare, with 5.00 EUR and 8.00 EUR fares for children from 6 to 12 inclusive and free travel below 6 (Terminal Fusina, 2026).

The published timetable shows hourly departures from Fusina between 08:00 and 22:00 and back from Zattere between 08:30 and 22:30, but several of those runs are marked seasonal: one set operates only from 1 April to 31 October, another only from 1 June to 30 September, and another only on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 1 June to 31 August.

Two cautions. Line 16 is one of the routes an ACTV rete unica ticket does not cover (ACTV, 2026), so it is a separate fare whatever else you have bought. And this is the public service: cruise lines arrange their own coach or boat transfers from the Marghera quays, so check what your fare already includes before paying twice.

Do cruise passengers pay the Venice access fee?

On the days the fee applies, yes, and the Comune's regulation is specific about it. Shipping companies, cruise lines included, count as carriers under article 2, and any individual who comes ashore into the old city owes the contributo di accesso unless an exclusion or exemption applies (Comune di Venezia, 2024).

Two provisions decide the matter. Article 5 exempts anyone who goes no further than the Ponte della Liberta, Piazzale Roma, Santa Lucia station, Stazione Marittima, the San Basilio station or Isola Nova del Tronchetto, for as long as they stay in those areas. Stepping off at Marittima and boarding a coach therefore does not trigger the fee; walking into the city does. Article 6 then provides that cruise passengers pay the ordinary amount set for that day even where a daily visitor threshold has lifted the rate above the ordinary one, and that their arrivals still count towards that threshold. The same article lets the Giunta Comunale agree a flat rate with the lines or with the port authority instead.

The amount and the calendar of chargeable days are fixed each year by resolution of the Giunta, so check the official portal before you sail. The regulation does fix two figures: anyone coming ashore without having paid owes 10.00 EUR, and failing to show proof carries an administrative fine of 25.00 to 150.00 EUR.

Luggage, the airport and parking on a turnaround day

If your cruise begins or ends in Venice, the airport leg is the part to settle first. Alilaguna's water bus between Marco Polo and Venice costs 18 EUR one way and 32 EUR return, and the fare includes one large bag and one piece of hand luggage, with 4.00 EUR for each additional bag (Alilaguna, 2026).

By road, ACTV prices the airport buses separately from the city network: a 75-minute airport ticket is 10.00 EUR, the return 18.00 EUR, and the combined airport plus 90-minute rete unica ticket 18.00 EUR. If you already hold a 1, 2, 3 or 7-day pass, the airport supplement is 7.00 EUR one way or 13.00 EUR return, and it has to be bought at the same time as the pass rather than added later (ACTV, 2026).

For a car, the other end of the People Mover is Isola Nova del Tronchetto, where the island car parks are, and the terminal car park beside Marittima is booked through the terminal operator. Its tariff is not quoted here because vtp.it could not be reached during this update, and the figure that used to sit on this page had no source. The parking page covers the mainland and island options that could be checked.

How busy is the port, and how much time does a call leave ashore?

Cruise traffic has been climbing since the 2021 transit ban. The port authority recorded 617,454 cruise passengers across Venice and Chioggia in 2025, a rise of 3.4 per cent, of which 584,284 were at Venice, up 6.7 per cent on 2024 (North Adriatic Sea Port Authority, 2026a). Over the twelve months to March 2026 the total passed 621,000, with Venice up 8.3 per cent and Chioggia on 33,261 (North Adriatic Sea Port Authority, 2026b).

The season is sharply shaped. Only 10,997 cruise passengers came through Venice in the first quarter of 2026, so a January to March sailing finds the terminals and the transfer services running thinly, and the first call of the year at Chioggia fell inside that quarter.

As for the hours a call actually buys you, the published timetables bound the day more usefully than any rule of thumb. The People Mover's service window is 07:00 to 23:00 on weekdays, and the last line 16 boat leaves Zattere for Fusina at 22:30. A Fusina call spends 50 to 60 minutes of your day on the crossing alone, by the operator's own average, before any queueing at either end. From Marittima the same journey is a few minutes on a monorail.