St Mark's Basilica tickets: official prices, opening hours and booking

St Mark's Basilica (Basilica di San Marco) tickets work in modules. You start with entry to the church itself and then pay a supplement to add the Pala d'Oro and the Museum with the Loggia dei Cavalli. Buy the basic ticket and you go in, look at the mosaics from the ground floor and are out again in half an hour. If you want the Byzantine goldwork and the original bronze horses, decide before you book, because the supplement has to be bought with the ticket or at the self-service machine.

Official 2026 prices

These are the rates set by the Procuratoria di San Marco, the body that runs the basilica, for individual visitors. They already include the standard 20% discount applied automatically to anyone not booking as a tour operator.

The Museum and Loggia dei Cavalli can be bought on its own, without basilica entry, only when the basilica is closed for services and the Museum is open — in practice, on Sunday mornings. Added as a supplement to a basilica ticket, the Pala d'Oro and the Museum cost €10 each.

A 50% concession on the individual rate applies to 10- to 18-year-olds, students up to 26 and over-65s, alongside discounts for groups of four or five adults. Concessions cannot be combined and do not apply to evening visits. You will be asked for ID at the door.

Free entry covers under-10s, school groups and their teachers, disabled visitors with a carer, police officers on duty, priests, members of religious orders and parish groups, guides accredited by the Procuratoria, and residents of the diocese: Venice, Caorle, Cavallino-Treporti, Eraclea, Jesolo, Mira and Quarto d'Altino. One caveat: free entry for residents does not extend to the campanile.

St Mark's Basilica tickets compared: box office or reseller

The cheapest ticket is always the Procuratoria's own, at tickets.basilicasanmarco.it. The catch is availability: morning slots sell out days ahead between April and October, and tickets carry your name, so you cannot pass one to a friend.

When the official slots have gone, or when you need a booking that fits around a tour you have already paid for, the resellers come into play. It is worth knowing exactly what the extra buys:

• St. Mark's Basilica: Hosted Entry Ticket (Only Cathedral), from €24. It covers the same ground floor as the €10 official ticket. The difference pays for a host at the meeting point and entry as a group, which saves real time on chaotic days. Across more than 1,450 reviews the average sits at 3.6 out of 5, and the complaints are nearly always about the wait at the meeting point rather than the visit.
• St. Mark's Basilica Hosted Entry Ticket + Terrace Access, from €48. The official equivalent is the €20 Basilica + Museum ticket. If the Loggia dei Cavalli is the point of the trip and the official site has nothing left, this is the only route in; otherwise book earlier. Rated 3.6 out of 5 from 766 reviews.
• St. Mark's Basilica & Bell Tower Tour, from €52. Officially that is €10 + €15 = €25, but from two different ticket offices and two different queues. The package makes sense only when your time is worth more than your money.
• Guided tour of the basilica, from €29. Here the sums change: the price includes a guide, and mosaics no one explains to you stay decoration.
• Exclusive after-hours entry with a guided tour, from €149. This matches the official evening visits with the basilica and crypt lit, which the Procuratoria sells only to guided groups at a per-group rate. An hour and a half, very few people, no noise: expensive, and genuinely unrepeatable.

What to see inside

The basilica you walk into is the third built on the spot, consecrated at the end of the eleventh century on a Greek-cross plan with five domes, following Byzantine models. It did not begin as a city cathedral: it was the doge's own chapel, attached to the Doge's Palace, and its job was to stage the power of the Republic.

The mosaics. They cover domes, vaults and walls across thousands of square metres, all on gold grounds. They shift colour with the light: in the middle of the day the sun comes through the high windows and sets the domes alight, and by evening they turn almost red. Work ran from the eleventh century to the seventeenth, so you move from pure Byzantine style to Renaissance cartoons as you walk.

The floor. Opus sectile marble, with geometric patterns and animals. The waves you feel underfoot are not a design decision: they are eight centuries of lagoon subsidence.

The Pala d'Oro. Behind the high altar, this altarpiece was begun in Constantinople in the tenth century and reassembled into its present form in the mid-1300s, with Byzantine enamels and thousands of precious stones. You can only see it close up with the supplement, and its own queue forms to the right of the chancel.

Museo di San Marco and the Loggia dei Cavalli. A steep staircase takes you up to gallery level, where you see the mosaics at the height they were laid. The museum holds the four original bronze horses brought from Constantinople after the Fourth Crusade of 1204; the ones on the façade are copies. The outer loggia looks over the square and the Torre dell'Orologio, and it is the best view of St Mark's Square you can get without going up the campanile.

The baptistery and crypt are not on the free-flow route: the baptistery is visited only with a guide, in groups of up to 25 and for half an hour, and the crypt is part of the evening visits.

Opening hours and when to go

Monday to Saturday the basilica opens at 9:30, last entry is 16:45 and it closes at 17:15. On Sundays and religious holidays it opens to visitors at 14:00, because the morning belongs to services. The Museum and Loggia dei Cavalli, though, open at 9:30 every day, Sundays included: that is the only way into the complex on a Sunday morning.

Slots to aim for. 9:30 on the dot, or the last hour before 16:45. In the middle of the day the basilica absorbs the wave of guided groups and the one-way route inside slows to a shuffle.

Season. From November to February, outside the holidays, you walk in with almost no wait. From April to October, book at least a week ahead — longer if you want a particular hour.

Acqua alta. The narthex is one of the first places in the city to take water, and with high tides entry can be temporarily managed or suspended. Acqua alta is the tidal flooding that hits Venice in autumn and winter: between November and January, check the council's tide forecast at www.comune.venezia.it/it/content/centro-previsioni-e-segnalazioni-maree the evening before.

The smart way in

Visitors go in through the Porta di San Pietro, on the left-hand side of the façade as you face it from the square. The Porta di San Clemente, on the right, is for schools, groups and guides.

Three moves that genuinely work:

1. Drop your rucksack first, not afterwards. The bag drop is in Piazzetta dei Leoncini, on the north flank of the basilica. Arrive at the gate carrying one and you are sent back, and you lose your slot.
2. Turn up five minutes before your time, not twenty. The queues outside are made almost entirely of people who came too early for their own booking.
3. On Sunday morning, go for the Museum. While the basilica is closed to visitors until 14:00, the Museum and Loggia dei Cavalli are already open and half empty.

Entry rules

These are the rules of a working church and they are applied at the door, not for show.

• Dress: shoulders covered, no very short shorts or skirts, no low-cut tops, heads uncovered for men, no bare feet.
• Bags: rucksacks and bags over 40x30x20 cm are refused; wheeled cases are never allowed.
• Photography: permitted for strictly personal use only; photography and filming with professional equipment are banned.
• Behaviour: silence is expected in the basilica and in the Museum and loggia; the route runs one way and you cannot double back.
• Named tickets: the visitor's name goes on the ticket at the time of booking, and tickets cannot be transferred.

Your ticket works elsewhere too

This is the part almost nobody uses. Since 1 July 2025 every ticket that includes the basilica also lets you in, within six months of purchase, to a long list of other places: Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello, the sacristy of Santa Maria della Salute, the Pinacoteca Manfrediniana and more than thirty Venetian churches, among them Santa Maria dei Miracoli, San Sebastiano, San Giacomo dell'Orio, Madonna dell'Orto, Santo Stefano and the Redentore. It also gives free entry to the Casa di The Human Safety Net in the Procuratie.

Entry to the basilica itself stays tied to your booked slot; the other sites you visit when it suits you, any time within the six months. If you are in Venice for three days, that turns a €10 ticket into access to half the city.

How to save money

• Book on the Procuratoria's own site a few days ahead. It is always the lowest fare.
• Check the 50% concession for under-18s, students up to 26 and over-65s before you buy four full-price tickets.
• Use the thirty included churches instead of buying separate tickets around the city.
• Do not pay twice for the same thing. The combined ticket with the Doge's Palace is worth it only if you need a single booking, not if you have time to buy separately.
• The access fee is a different animal. On the days set by the council, day visitors not staying overnight pay €5 if they book ahead or €10 at the last minute, and only at cda.ve.it. No ticket reseller includes it.

Getting there

Address: Piazza San Marco 328, 30124 Venice.

• Vaporetto (the city's public water bus): San Marco-Vallaresso (lines 1, 2 and night line N), five minutes on foot across the piazzetta; or San Zaccaria (lines 1, 2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2 and N), seven minutes along the Riva degli Schiavoni. Fares and passes are covered in the vaporetto guide; ACTV is the city's public transport operator.
• On foot: about 10 minutes from Rialto, 12 from the Accademia, 35–40 from Santa Lucia station. If you are arriving from Marco Polo airport or a cruise ship with luggage, deal with the bags before the basilica: nothing on wheels gets through the door.

What's nearby

• Doge's Palace — attached to the basilica, same side of the piazzetta.
• St Mark's Campanile — a hundred metres, with a lift to the belfry.
• The Bridge of Sighs — three minutes; the best view is from the Ponte della Paglia.
• Torre dell'Orologio — on the north side of the square, visits by guided tour and booking only.
• Palazzo Pisani and its roof terrace — ten minutes towards Campo Santo Stefano.

In short: St Mark's Basilica tickets start at €10 officially, build up by adding the Pala d'Oro and the Museum at €10 each, and stay valid for six months across dozens of other churches. Book your slot as soon as you have dates, leave the rucksack in Piazzetta dei Leoncini and keep your shoulders covered. Those three things decide whether you get in.