Venice Connected

(formerly "Venice Card")

Until recently, the Venice tourist authorities sold a pass called the Venice Card, which offered 3 or 7 days of public transportation and free use of public toilets. Higher-priced versions of the card included admission to city-owned museums, visits to Chorus Pass churches, and optional transportation between Venice's Marco Polo Airport and the city on the Alilaguna airport boat.

The Venice Card has been discontinued and replaced by a new product called Venice Connected, which offers many of the same services as the Venice Card with a more complicated pricing scheme.

With the new pass, you decide what services you want at the time of purchase (such as transportation, museum passes, and toilet cards), and you pay a price that varies according to to the time of your visit: Low/Middle Season, Middle/High Season, or Top Season.

To make matters even more complicated, the "seasons" vary not only by month, but also by day of the week. Since the pricing is both a la carte and date-sensitive, we can't tell you what you should expect to pay: The only way to check prices is to decide what services you want ahead of time and go through the step-by-step online purchase procedure.

• Tip: You'll save 15 per cent if you order the card online before your arrival, but to get the savings, you must pay and receive a voucher number at least 15 days before picking up the card in Venice.

Our advice:

Unless you want to plan every detail of your visit ahead of time, you'll find it easier to simply buy a 12-hour to 7-day "tourist travel card" from any ACTV ticket office or vaporetto ticket booth. This card, which looks like a standard vaporetto ticket, will give you unlimited public transportation on boats in the Venice Lagoon, and you can pay for museums and public toilets as needed. (Be sure to validate the ACTV tourist travel card in the yellow stamping machine near the vaporetto platform the first time you use it.)

For more information on Venice Connected, see the Venice Connected Web site.

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