From Padua we cycled through Maestre into the historical center of Venice.
The center is spreaded over 100 islands. To reach it, we had to cross the two kilometers long bridge “Ponte della libertà”.
The historical center of Venice is for pedestrians only. That means that apart from cars and other mothorised vehicles also bicycles aren’t allowed. Even pushing your bicycle is forbidden there. The only exception is the route between Piazzale-Roma over the bridge Costituzione to Santa Lucia until the Scalzi bridge. On this road you’re allowed to push your bike.
Arriving cyclists can use the parking boxes of “BiciPark Venezia”. It is located at the Piazzale Roma and holds space for 100 bicycles. Each bicycle gets one box. It’s not allowed to put more than one bike in one box. One box cost 10 Euros for 24 hours. E-bikes can be charged inside the box and cost therefore 11 Euros per day. You can either book your box once you arrived in Venice or you can make a reservation online. Especially in highseason it’s recommended to book in advance.
You can reserve your box here. After putting down the dates you would like to rent a box, you have to enter your contact information and put down a credit card. After the reservation you get a confirmation per mail. With that mail you also get a code. You will need this code later on in Venice. You only get one code per reservation. Even if you reserve more than one box, you only need one reservation code.
So after you successfully reserved your box (or not) you enter Venice over the Ponte della libertà. The entry to the BiciPark is on the left-hand side of the road. Sadly it’s not very well marked, so for those who arrive for the first time in Venice by bike it’s almost impossible to spot the entry and at the same time cross the two lines of traffic. We recommend to just continue straight to Piazzale-Roma, get of your bike and push it back on the other side of the road. It’s not that far and way less stressful.
Once you’ve arrived at the BiciPark you head for the ticket machine. There you can choose your language and then follow the instructions. If you have a reservation that’s when you need your reservation code. You press “park my bicycle” and “I have a reservation”. Then you enter your code and choose the box(es) you’d like. If everything worked well, you’ll get a ticket with the box number and a code on it. If you’ve chosen more than one box you’ll have for each box an individual code. Keep this ticket safe as you will need it to recover you bike.
After this check-in you have 30 Minutes to go to your chosen box and put your bike in it. If it takes longer than the 30 minutes you will have to do the check-in process again.
Is everything in place you can close the door. The green light above the box should now shine red.
During the whole time you’ve booked your box you can open and close it with your code. So you can also put some bags in there and get back if you need something.
Check-out also works through the ticket machine. Here you will need your code you got at the check-in.
If you overstay your booked time, the machine will automatically charge the additional time. The box will not open just like that and leave your bicycle ready to be stolen. So relax and enjoy Venice 🙂