Venice Marco Polo Airport ground transport

Marco Polo is built on the mainland shore of the lagoon, which produces the arrival problem that defines Venice: a road exists, but it ends. Buses run from directly outside the terminal to Piazzale Roma — ATVO's express and ACTV's line 5 both around €12 single, €20 return, twenty to twenty-five minutes — and Piazzale Roma is where cars, coaches and taxis are physically stopped by the water. From there you continue by vaporetto, by foot, or not at all. The alternative is to skip the road entirely. Alilaguna runs waterbuses from a dock about seven minutes' walk from arrivals, at roughly €18, out across the lagoon and into the city by canal; lines serve San Marco, Rialto, Fondamente Nove, Murano and the Lido, running approximately hourly per line between about 08:00 and 20:00. It is slower than the bus — an hour and a quarter to San Marco is normal — and it is the more pleasant arrival by a wide margin. At the top end, private water taxis take you from the airport dock to a hotel's own water entrance for something between €190 and €280, more for longer runs or at night, and split between four or six people that is less absurd than it sounds. Shared water taxis at around €39 a head sit in between. The single most useful thing to know before booking anything: ask your hotel which vaporetto stop or which water-taxi entrance it uses, and how many bridges lie between. Venice has no lifts, no escalators and around four hundred bridges, most of them stepped.