About this guide

Independent, and not official

The Basilica is run by the Procuratoria di San Marco, and its official website is basilicasanmarco.it. Its only official ticket shop is tickets.basilicasanmarco.it. This site has no connection with either. Where a page mentions buying a ticket, the official shop is named first, because at €10.00 it is the cheapest way in.

How the facts are checked

Every price, opening time and rule on this site is read from one of the Basilica’s own documents — its ticket shop, its tariff, its access rules, its liturgical calendar — and every historical date and name from its own history pages. Each is stored once, with the document and the day it was read, and every page quotes that one record, so two pages cannot disagree.

Where two official documents disagree, we quote both. Where none of them answers a question — whether the Treasury is open, which days the church is closed — we look for a reliable published source, such as the Venetian press, and name it; failing that, we say it is not published. What visitors report on forums appears only as visitor reports. The full list of documents is on the sources page.

What is ours

The advice — which ticket suits whom, when to go, how long to allow — is our own reading of those facts, and the pages say so where it matters. The photographs are not ours: each is an openly licensed work from Wikimedia Commons, credited under the image and in the gallery. None is generated.

How the site is paid for

Some links to guided tours may be affiliate links: if you book through one, the site may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It does not change what the pages say, and no page tells you a tour is necessary when the official ticket will do.