Venice Vaporetto Lines: Which Boat Takes You Where
Venice’s vaporetto network reads like a bus map drawn on water: numbered routes, circulars, night service, and a few boats that only exist to connect things no road could. This guide walks through every line a visitor is realistically going to use, what it is for, and the two or three classic rides worth taking for the view alone.
The two lines that matter most: Line 1 is the slow local boat that stops at every landing on the Grand Canal — the scenic classic and the cheapest Grand Canal “cruise” in Venice. Line 2 is the express: fewer stops, faster between Piazzale Roma, San Marco, and the Giudecca canal. Everything else is specialized: island circulars, the Burano boat, night lines, and the airport services.
How the network is organized
The public company ACTV operates the vaporetti on numbered routes, plus the city’s land buses. Numbers roughly sort into families: single digits are the core urban routes, x.1 / x.2 pairs are circulars running the same loop in opposite directions, and higher numbers reach out into the lagoon. Renumberings and seasonal tweaks happen often enough that you should treat this page as orientation and confirm the current line table in the ACTV app or at a major stop before committing to a tight connection.
Line 1: the Grand Canal classic
Line 1 is the reason the vaporetto is famous. It crawls the whole Grand Canal from Piazzale Roma (the bus and taxi arrival point) through the railway station (Ferretto), Rialto, and San Marco Vallaresso, then continues out to the Lido. It stops at every landing — around a dozen in the Grand Canal alone — and runs roughly every 12 minutes through the day.
For the price of a single ticket (€9.50, valid 75 minutes — long enough to ride the canal end-to-end), you get the same palazzo-front view that gondola passengers pay about €90 for, seated, with a timetable. It is crowded at sunset and during Carnival, and standing at the left-hand rail toward Rialto gives you the postcard façades; the right-hand rail catches the late-afternoon light. If you ride only one line for pleasure, this is it.
Line 2: the express
Line 2 shares the Grand Canal corridor but skips most intermediate stops, making it the commuter choice and the fastest public link between Piazzale Roma, the station area, San Marco, and — on its Giudecca-canal branch — the island of Giudecca and the Zitelle and Redentore landings. Some runs divert through the Canale di Cannaregio instead of the Grand Canal; the destination board on the boat and the electronic displays at each stop tell you which way a given departure turns. When you are late for a train or a flight connection, Line 2 is the one you hope comes first.
The circulars: 4.1 / 4.2 (Murano) and 5.1 / 5.2 (Lido)
The 4.1 / 4.2 pair loops between the historic center and Murano, the glass island: one direction swings north through the Canale di Cannaregio past Fondamente Nove, the other swings south along the Giudecca canal. Either direction lands you on Murano in 20–35 minutes depending on your start point, and the pair lets you go out one way and back the other without retracing a single view.
The 5.1 / 5.2 pair runs the same kind of loop but toward the Lido, Venice’s beach barrier island, circling the historic center by the Giudecca canal and the northern edge. They are also the workhorses that stitch the southern canal fringe together without forcing you through San Marco.
Into the lagoon: Burano, Torcello, and the northern islands
Line 12 from Fondamente Nove is the boat to the postcard lagoon: it crosses to Treporti and Punta Sabbioni on the sandbar, then hops to Mazzorbo and Burano, the lace island with the technicolor houses. Torcello, the quiet, ancient island with the cathedral, is reached by a very short connecting hop from Burano. It is a long ride — budget 45 minutes to an hour each way — but it is the best “open water” cruise in the network, and a 24-hour pass can make the whole day-trip cost nothing extra.
Night service and the airport boats
After midnight the night lines (marked N) keep the main corridors alive at a much reduced frequency — genuinely useful for late arrivals by train or for the Lido after a summer evening. Separately, the boats that meet flights at Marco Polo Airport are the Alilaguna lines (Blue, Orange, Red): a different company, different tickets, not valid on ACTV vaporetti, priced around €15 by route. Confusingly, some airport-bound travelers instead take an ACTV bus to Piazzale Roma and board a vaporetto from there — with pass-inclusive tickets this can be the cheaper route. Our tickets and prices page covers which pass covers what.
Which line do I actually need?
| You want to… | Take |
|---|---|
| See the Grand Canal, all stops, for €9.50 | Line 1 |
| Get from the bus station to San Marco fast | Line 2 (Grand Canal branch) |
| Visit Giudecca’s churches and waterfront | Line 2 (Giudecca branch) or 5.1/5.2 |
| See glassblowing on Murano | 4.1 or 4.2 from the center |
| Beach afternoon on the Lido | Line 1 or 5.1/5.2 |
| Photograph Burano’s colored houses | Line 12 from Fondamente Nove (+ Torcello hop) |
| Arrive from or reach the airport by boat | Alilaguna lines (separate ticket) |
Last verified October 19, 2026. Line tables change seasonally; confirm departures in the ACTV app or at a staffed stop.