Partners
Venice Card - City of Venice (Italy)
Venice Card Spa issues the tourist ticket Venice Card: it is all-inclusive, and gives access to the main tourist services offered by Venice: public transportation (Actv), public toilets (Vesta) and entrance to the Civic Museums of the city. It also grants discounts in many cultural structures and shops of the city.
Venice is a unique city in the world, built on water and connected by hundreds of bridges. It can therefore appear as an inaccessible city and not proper to welcome old people or people with special needs. Fortunately this is not completely true.
A visit to Venice can in fact become feasible to everyone using with care public means of transportation, buses or water-buses, and thanks to available information about itineraries without architectural barriers.
As shown by this short report, the city of Venice and its institutions have always been careful and especially sensitive to the issue of accessibility.
Concrete examples can be found in the activities of some municipal offices (among these: “Progetto Lettura Agevolata” and “Informahandicap”) and from the recent approval of the PEBA (Plan for the elimination of the architectural features that deny access to people with special needs).
In short PEBA contains:
1) the survey and the classification of all the architectural features that deny access to people with special needs present in public spaces and buildings of municipal property;
2) proposals for their elimination;
3) an assessment of the costs to eliminate them.
Moreover, from now onwards every housing project, restoration project or extraordinary maintenance of public works should guarantee the elimination of the architectural features that deny access to people with special needs (as quoted on PEBA).
Here below, we make a short analysis regarding the accessibility to the main gates of Venice for people with special needs (Railway station, Piazzale Roma terminal, Marco Polo Airport and Cruise terminal). Then we shortly analyse the accessibility to public transports, public and tourist facilities.
According to the current information, the railway station of Mestre and that of Venice (Santa Lucia) seem to be accessible to people with special needs. They are actually supplied with access ramps, suitable hygienic services and equipped with two welcome–centers that give information and assistance to customers.
However some parts of both stations are still inaccessible.
Counters of ticket-offices do not actually have a proper height for people with difficulties and the railway station of Mestre is equipped with special lifts suited for approach the railroads, which unfortunately are not always working.
In Santa Lucia railway there is no such problem; this station is actually a “terminal station” and has not therefore any subway.
Moreover, both railway stations have centers to welcome people with special needs.
For those who reach Venice by car, several opportunities are provided with in Piazzale Roma, where there are special parking lots for people with special needs in possession of a special pass. Thanks to this special pass they can benefit from discounted rates or, sometimes, quite free rates. Another parking lot, named Tronchetto, is just before Piazzale Roma. From this parking lot, people can comfortably reach the heart of the city, taking an accessible line of water-buses.
Alternatively tourists can leave the car in the mainland (in Mestre or Marghera) and reach Venice by bus or train. The distance is actually minimal and both means of transportation (bus and train) are accessible to people with special needs.
The "Marco Polo" airport is approximately 20 km far from the city center of Venice to which it is connected by a bus line that is accessible also to people with special needs; on the contrary, the existing water connection from the airport to Venice isn’t accessible to this kind of costumers.
The airport has a multi-storied parking lot (free for people with special needs in possession of special pass), where it is possible to use the elevator instead of escalators.
Moreover, the airport offers a shuttle bus service and public toilets service that are completely accessible. At the airport there is also an assistance service for people with motor difficulties; some employees can actually help people to reach the boarding place, the check-in counters or the shuttle buses. To do these operations the airport places some wheelchairs at customers’ disposal if the size of their own wheelchairs is too big in order to approach airport services.
With regard to the arrival terminal of the port of Venice, there are three different landing places:
- Cruise Terminal
- Ferry Terminal
- Hydrofoil Terminal
However, these terminals of arrival / departure have a reduced accessibility for people with special needs. According to the analysis carried out by PEBA of the Municipality of Venice the whole zone is actually served by insufficiently accessible public means of transportation and has insufficiently accessible landing places.
Public transportation services in Venice are managed by ACTV, a municipal company. According to the current information, all landing places in Venice are accessible. Troubles in using them can be found only in case of high water: the slope of the entrance could in fact become too steep.
Water-buses (lines 1 and 82), that allow to cross the city, are surely accessible for two wheelchairs at a time, always followed by a companion. Also the motorships that link up Venice, Lido and Punta Sabbioni are accessible. From Tronchetto island and from Lido there are two Ferry-boats with accessible toilets and lifts for people with special needs.
In short, almost every urban line of public transport is equipped to transport a disabled person in wheelchair with companion, so that everyone can move more or less all around the municipality of Venice.
Several offices/counters in Venice offer information, brochures, guides and maps with itineraries to people with special needs; these offices are the “Informahandicap” offices created by the Municipality of Venice and the APT tourist information offices located both in Venice and in the mainland.
These offices, besides giving useful information, are licensed to give the keys for lifts installed in eight bridges in Venice, Murano or Burano. These lifts allow people in wheelchair to move around the center of Venice more easily.
In Venice and Mestre it is also possible to rent a private means of transportation equipped to carry people with limited mobility (car, van or motorboat). The only limit for this service is that it should be booked some days before and so it is not useful for “daily” tourists, who become acquainted with this service only at their arrival in Venice.
Public toilet services, displaced in the major tourist zones, are mostly accessible also for people with special needs.
The large number of museums (public and private) are instead mostly inaccessible for this category of people. There is actually a limited number of structures that are equipped with facilitated entrance, accessible toilets, lifts to reach the superior floors, special helps to facilitate the visit and so on.
In the same position are restaurants, shops and hotels. The greater part is actually barely accessible, but this is also due to the peculiarity and typicality of the fabric of the city.
However “Informahandicap” and “APT” offices can offer important information about accessible accommodation structures. They can also suggest interesting itineraries thought for people with special needs that can facilitate their visit to this peculiar and unique city.
