Venezia Unica City Pass Review

Hi friends.
Friday is finally here, thank God! We met yesterday two awesome guys from New Jersey, friends of Elvio, with whom we talked a little about or project and who helped us with some ideas.

I wanted today to analyze and review the Venezia Unica City Pass.

Venezia Unica City Pass

What is it?

Venezia Unica City Pass is a card offered officially by the city of Venice, that allows you to buy different services in Venice like public transportation tickets, museum access, wifi and more.

On their official website, http://www.veneziaunica.it/en you can build up the card you want with only the services you need, composing it as you think fit.

Remember that each person has to get his own card, so all the prices must be multiplied by the number of people in your group (there are discounts for kids and elderly but not very significant ones).

Let’s see in detail what it offers.

Museum and Churches

• Tourist city Pass
  • Adult pack 39,90€. The biggest museum pack. It is unlikely you’ll see all of them, unless you really love museums and you stay in Venice for several days. Not recommended.
  • San Marco pack 25,90€. Looks good on paper but still not interesting, there is a better deal below.  Not recommended.
• Tourist city pass + Fenice Theather tour
  • All the options included in the tourist city pass plus a tour of Fenice theathre. Still not a good deal. You can buy a Fenice tour ticket separatley if you want it.
• Musei civici di Venezia
  • Museum pass 24€. Much better than the tourist city pass. If you want to visit all the museums of Venice this is the offer for you. If you want to visit just the famous ones, choose the next one.
  • St. Mark’s Square Museum 17€. This is the one most tourists actually want: to visit only the most famous museums around St. Mark’s Square. Recommended.
• Naval history museum 5€. Meh… don’t get it now, you’ll buy a ticket in Venice if you’ll decide to go.
• Fenice theathre tour 9€. It’s up to you, if you want to visit it, you can get it now or directly in Venice.
• All other museums offers are useless.

Public and private transports

Here you can buy single or daily tickets for the public transports in the city. Prices vary from 7€ (single ticket) to 60€ (7 days unlimited). Remember that we’re talking per person.

My advice is: don’t get daily tickets, at least not now.

• First of all Venice is not that big, and you can walk all of it in less than one day.
• Vaporetti are often very crowded during tourist season (carnival and summer from may to september) and entering one can be difficult, especially with luggage. Sometimes you’ll have to wait for the next one because the one that just arrived is too full, and sometimes they’re late.
• Venice is best enjoyed as a local, walking , breathing the air and watching every single building.
• Going in a vaporetto is an experience you should try at least once, but for that you’ll only need a single ticket (7€)

If you’ll decide that you really love vaporetti, that you’re tired of walking or whatever other reason, you will still be able to get your daily ticket easily in Venice in Piazzale Roma and in many many other places, so no reason to buy it in advance.

In my opinion, if you stay in Venice for about 3 days, as most do, you’ll only need a couple of tickets to go and come back from Murano/Burano, and maybe another couple to visit San Giorgio island and it’s belltower, so I’d suggest you to avoid daily tickets.

What you can get now instead is the ACTV tickets from the airport to Venice and back. Don’t get the Alilaguna tickets: they cost more, the boats are not that good and the view is limited due to very small windows.

Parking

Complete crap. Even if you arrive by car, the best options are far from this deal. See our other post on the subject.

Services

• Wi-fi connection 5€ (24hr) to 20€ (7 days). Meh… not really worth it. If you’re lucky your hotel will offer you a better one, and there aren’t that many hotspots in the city (as you can see on the map of venezia unica site).
• Public toilets 3€ per day (only 2 accesses)  9€ per 7 accesses. This is complete bullshit! First of all there aren’t that many public toilets. Secondly just go in a bar, order a coffee at the counter for 1€ and use theirs!

That’s all folks, I hope this review will be useful. All in all the only thing I recommend buying in advance are the tickets for St. Mark’s Museums and maybe the ACTV ticket from the airport to Venice. All the rest you can get in the city, if you really need it.