The price of a single vaporetto ticket in Venice is outrageous if you're a casual tourist: You'll pay a whopping €7,--, which is more than the cost of a pizza margherita in some restaurants.

The Venice Connected pass and the local transit authority's Venice Tourist Travel Cards are worth considering if you you're in Venice for a short time and plan to use the boats frequently, but they're expensive overkill for longer stays.

Fortunately, there's another alternative: the imob.venezia stored-value travel card, which is a successor to the CartaVenezia discount card that formerly was available only to residents of the Veneto region.

imob Cartavenezia travel cards

ABOVE: Front and back of the imob.venezia stored-value travel card.

As a tourist, you'll pay €40 for the imob.venezia card, but your card will be valid for five years, and you'll be able to add stored-value fares to the card whenever you're in Venice.

With the imob.venezia (which many Venetians and even the local transit authority's Web site still refer to as the "Cartevenezia,") you can save money in either of two ways:

By purchasing individual paperless waterbus "tickets" at the resident fare of €1,20 (or even less if you buy 10 at a time).
By purchasing a monthly or annual commuter pass, which offers even bigger savings to students and other visitors who use the vaporetti and motoscafi daily.

Where to buy an imob.venezia card:

To apply for an imob.venezia card, you can visit one of the Hellovenezia ticket offices listed in section 3 of this page. These offices can issue the card on the spot. (Despite what you may have read in guidebooks or on sites like TripAdvisor, you no longer need to use a receipt temporarily and pick up your card at a later date.)

Also, you now have the option of picking up the forms, completing them at home or at your hotel, and taking them back to the issuing office. (We'd suggest simply doing everything at once; it's faster, and the agent can help you if you have any questions.)

In the following pages, we provide illustrated step-by-step instructions for buying the imob.venezia card at the Hellovenezia office (a.k.a. the ACTV ticket office) in Venice's Piazzale Roma.

Next page: How to buy an imob.venezia card

In this article:

imob.venezia card - Cartavenezia

How to buy an imob.venezia card

Also see:

Venice local transportation articles

Vaporetto Water Buses - Basic Information

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