Renting a car in Venice: the honest guide

In Venice, a rental car is not for seeing Venice: the historic centre has no roadway for cars at all, and the last asphalt stops at Piazzale Roma, the city’s road bridgehead. The car is for everything else — the Prosecco hills, the Dolomites, the Veneto towns, Lake Garda — which is why you pick it up where asphalt still exists: Piazzale Roma, Tronchetto, Mestre or Marco Polo airport.

The rest of this guide is the part the counter rarely explains: how to choose your pick-up point based on where you sleep and where you are going, how the ZTL, the limited-traffic zone, actually works when the car is not yours, what the price you see must include before you pay, how the cauzione, the security deposit, behaves on your card, and which mistakes cost more in Venice than anywhere else.

Why Venice keeps the car outside

Island Venice is a city of water: alleys, bridges and canals, not a single carriageway. From the Ponte della Libertà you reach only two bridgeheads, Piazzale Roma and Tronchetto, and beyond them you continue on foot, by vaporetto or on the People Mover. That logistics surprises anyone who books imagining an ordinary Italian city, and it flips the whole point of renting: the car is the tool for leaving the lagoon, not for entering it.

• In island Venice there is no on-street parking at all: only paid garages and car parks, and they fill up early on weekends and public holidays.
• If you sleep in a sestiere, a Venetian quarter, and keep the car for several nights, you pay for the convenience in parking, not in fuel.
• On the mainland space is far more plentiful, and from Mestre you reach the city in a few minutes by train or bus.
• The worst moment to improvise is an evening arrival with luggage: decide where the car goes before you leave, not at the garage barrier.

Where to pick the car up: the points compared

The right question is not where it is cheapest, but where the rental fits your trip without dead days. If you arrive by plane and head for the mountains, start at the airport; if you arrive by train and sleep on the mainland, start at Mestre; if you sleep in the centre and want a single day out, take the car at Piazzale Roma or Tronchetto and bring it back that evening.

One arrangement that makes real sense in Venice is picking up in one place and dropping off in another: you start from the lagoon and leave the car in Verona, in Bolzano or elsewhere, without driving the same road back. It is not available everywhere or on the same terms: ask for it when booking and have it confirmed in writing, with any surcharge stated in advance.

ZTL: the mechanism, not the bogeyman

Almost every Italian historic centre has a limited-traffic zone, watched by cameras that read your plate at the gate. Nobody stops you and you notice nothing at the time: with a rental car the penalty arrives months later, because the rental company passes your details to the authority and adds its own file-handling charge. The rules, the hours, the gates and the amounts are set by each individual comune, the municipality, and they change often: the only reliable source is the website of the comune concerned, to be checked before you set off.

• In island Venice the question never arises, because nobody drives there; it does arise in Mestre, where the pedestrian and regulated area around the centre has its own rules and its own gates.
• It applies across the Veneto, not only in Venice: Padua, Verona, Treviso, Vicenza and Bassano each have their own regime.
• Satnav optimises the route, not the permission: when it leads you into a historic centre, stop and look for parking outside the gates.
• If the trip continues into Lombardy, note that Milan also applies its own access measures to the central areas: check with the comune of Milan.
• At pick-up, ask the agency how it handles notices of violation and what file-handling charge it applies: few customers ask, and many learn the answer months later.

What the price you see must include

The bill that hurts is almost never the daily rate: it is what gets added at the counter when you have no alternative left, luggage on the floor and a vaporetto to catch. Before you pay, insist on seeing all of this in writing.

• Mileage: how many kilometres are included and what each extra kilometre costs.
• Cover: what is included and what excess would stay on you in case of damage or theft.
• Deposit: what amount is blocked, on what kind of card, and when it is released.
• Fuel: a full-to-full policy is the easiest to verify on return.
• Surcharges: additional driver, child seat, young driver, terminal pick-up, chains or winter tyres for the mountains.
• Hours: an out-of-hours pick-up or drop-off is not a detail, and in Venice least of all.

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Deposit and excess, plainly

The deposit is not a payment: it is an amount blocked on the main driver’s credit card as security, and it usually matches the excess that would stay on you. It remains tied up for the whole rental and is released a few days after you return the car, so take your remaining credit into account if the same card has to cover the hotel. Many offices accept only credit cards in the driver’s name and refuse prepaid cards: that is the check to make beforehand, not in front of the counter.

1. 1Turn up with a valid licence, an identity document and a credit card in the name of the person driving.
2. 2Photograph the car calmly and in good light before you leave: wheels, bumpers, windscreen, roof, boot floor and interior.
3. 3Have every pre-existing mark written onto the handover sheet, including the ones that look trivial.
4. 4On return, ask for the contract to be closed and keep the receipt: that is the document you dispute a later charge with.

Behind the wheel between the Veneto and the Dolomites

On the map the distances look laughable; in the mountains they are not: passes are driven at a low average, summer brings queues, and autumn evenings fall earlier than you expect. Allow generous time, one extra tank, and a check of the car’s equipment at pick-up. These are the rules a driver in Italy should know by heart.

• Limits for cars: 130 km/h on the motorway, dropping to 110 km/h in rain or snow; 110 km/h on main extra-urban roads with separated carriageways, dropping to 90 km/h in rain or snow; 90 km/h on secondary extra-urban roads; 50 km/h in built-up areas.
• New licence holders, meaning a licence held for less than 3 years: a maximum of 100 km/h on the motorway and 90 km/h on main extra-urban roads.
• Blood alcohol: 0.5 g/L. For holders of a licence for less than 3 years, for anyone under 21 and for professional drivers the limit is 0.0 g/L, that is zero tolerance.
• The warning triangle and the high-visibility retro-reflective vest must be on board, and the vest must be worn before you step onto the carriageway outside a built-up area: check that both are there at pick-up.
• Most of the motorway network in the north and centre is tolled, payable in cash, by card or with Telepass; in Sicily and on other southern routes several stretches are free.