The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

the opening hours of churches are given
in the guide. It’s impossible to generalize
about the opening hours of museums and
historic sites except to say that the largest
ones tend to be open every day, most of
the others are open six days a week, with
Monday and Tuesday the favoured days
of closure, and that winter hours are a lot
shorter than summer ones; we’ve given
opening hours of every museum covered in
the guide. (For the latest opening hours of
all of Venice’s major museums, see p.41.)
The museum entry charges quoted in
the guide are the full adult charge – bear
in mind that some museums give student
discounts, and all state museums give free
admission to visitors from EU countries
who can prove they are aged under 18 or
over 65, and half-price admission to young
people under 26.
One problem you’ll face is that many
churches and monuments are either completely
or partly closed for restoration (chiuso
per restauro): at any one time dozens
of projects are in progress all over Venice
(see Contexts), and it’s impossible to predict
which buildings will be under wraps in the
near future – all that can be said with any
degree of certainty is that you’ll find restorers
at work in parts of the Basilica di San Marco
and the Palazzo Ducale.
Other disrupting factors are national holidays.
Nearly all fee-charging sights (but not
bars and restaurants) will be closed on the
following dates:
January 1
January 6 (Epiphany)
Good Friday
Easter Monday
April 25 (Liberation Day and St Mark’s Day)
May 1 (Labour Day)
June 2 (Day of the Republic)
August 15 (Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary)
November 1 (Ogni Santi, “All Saints”)
November 4 (National Unity Day)
December 8 (Immaculate Conception of
the Blessed Virgin Mary)
December 25
December 26
In addition, many Venetian shops and
businesses close or work shorter hours for
the local festival of the Salute on November
21 (see Festivals colour section).
Telephones
Public phones, run by Telecom Italia, come
in various forms, usually with clear instructions
in English; if you can’t find a phone box,
bars will often have a phone you can use
– look for the yellow or red phone symbol.
Most public phones accept coins, but they
have a tendency to swallow the cash before
announcing that they are out of order, so if
you need to use a phone box you’d best buy
a phonecard (carta or scheda telefonica),
available from tabacchi and newsstands.
There are two types of carta telefonica: one
is a rigid plastic card which has a microchip
in it (on some of these you have to snap off
a corner of the card before inserting it into
the phone box); the other is a more fragile
piece of plastic that functions as a sort of
credit card. With the latter type it’s necessary
to call a free operator number (given on the
back of the card) when you use it for the first
time, and to key in a PIN number for subsequent
calls – a complicated process that has
a high failure rate, so stick to the microchip
variety. Tariffs are among the most expensive
in Europe; for national calls, the off-peak
period runs Mon–Fri 6.30pm–8am, then Sat
1pm until Mon 8am. Note that many Internet
points now offer international calls at lower
rates than phone boxes.
Telephone area codes are now an integral
part of the number and must always be
dialled, regardless of where you’re calling
from. Numbers beginning t800 are free, an
English-speaking operator is on t170, and
international directory enquiries is on t176.
To use your mobile phone, check with
your provider whether it will work in Italy
and what the charges will be. Technology in
Italy is GSM (wwww.gsmworld.com). Unless
you have a triband phone, it’s unlikely that a
mobile bought for use in North America will
work elsewhere. Most mobiles in Australia
and New Zealand are GSM, but it pays to
check before you leave home.
To call Italy from abroad dial your international
access code (00 from the UK, Ireland
and New Zealand; 011 from the US and
Canada; 0011 from Australia), followed by
39 for Italy, followed by the full Italian number
BASICS
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Travel essentials
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