Porto Marghera Took the Ships: What the 2021 Decree Actually Moved

The Traveler's Panel · checked 25 August 2026

Changing information. Prices, permits, seasons and road access change, sometimes at short notice. Everything here is a starting point for your own confirmation — not a quote, and not a guarantee. Verify with the operator and the relevant official body before you book.

Getting there — Venezia Mestre or Venezia Porto Marghera station → Marghera by bus or on foot; the cruise quays themselves are inside the port perimeter

1. Marghera is not remote and does not pretend to be. It has its own railway station on the Venezia–Padova line, it is minutes by bus from Mestre, and the Ponte della Libertà puts Venezia Santa Lucia about a quarter of an hour away. Anyone who has arrived in Venice by train or car has already been through it, generally without registering the fact.
2. The residential quartieri are open to anyone, because they are an ordinary Italian suburb of some 28,622 people by the gazetteer's count, laid out around a garden-city plan and a century of industrial employment. There is nothing to arrange and nothing to book.
3. The port is a different proposition. Porto Marghera is a working industrial and commercial port, and the Liguria and Lombardia quays where the cruise ships berth sit inside terminals operated by PSA Vecon and TIV. Access is by port pass through the authority's own procedures, for people with business there. There is no visitor route, no viewing platform and no published vantage point, and we found none.
4. If you are a cruise passenger rather than a visitor, the direction of travel is the reverse: you will be inside the perimeter and outside the district. Coach transfers move homeport passengers between the quays and Venice, and the great majority of calls here are homeport calls — 95% in the 2024 season, on the port authority's own figures.
5. Fusina, the second cluster of berths, is a separate place again: a ferry and ro-ro terminal on the mainland edge of the lagoon in the comune of Mira, about 45°25'11"N 12°15'25"E, with its own approach road and its own long history as the crossing point to Venice.

Indicative costs — verify before booking

What to pack

• Nothing special. This is a working district with shops, buses and a railway station, and it is in the same municipality as one of the most visited cities in Europe.
• A long lens is the wrong instinct here. The quays are not photographable from public ground and attempting it around a port perimeter is a poor idea in any country.
• Reading matter, if you want the argument rather than the view: the culture ministry's release on the decree, and Italy's own state-of-conservation reports to UNESCO, which are franker about where the passengers are going than most coverage is.
• Ordinary caution about ground and dust in a district under long-running remediation. Stay on public roads and out of fenced land, which is a legal boundary here and not a suggestion.
• Low expectations about signage. Nothing in Marghera announces that this is where the ships the world thinks were banned actually tie up.

Where to stay

There is accommodation in Marghera and it exists mostly because of Venice: a strip of chain hotels near the motorway and the causeway, priced and marketed as budget alternatives to the historic centre, which is precisely the relationship this dossier is about. Staying here is cheaper, quieter and about fifteen minutes by rail from Santa Lucia, and it also means the tourist night tax and the day-visitor fee land differently: the access fee applies to the Città antica between 08:30 and 16:00 on listed days, not to the mainland, and in 2026 it ended altogether on 26 July. Mestre, immediately north, has far more rooms and the same connection. We would not send anyone here for the scenery, and we would send them here for the argument: a night in Marghera and a morning walk to the edge of the port zone tells you more about how the 2021 decree actually works than a week in San Marco does.

Safety & responsible travel

• Do not repeat 'Venice banned cruise ships' as a completed act. The decree names three canals and orders berths built five kilometres away, and the port's own passenger numbers have risen every year since.
• If you are writing about the ban, name the receiving district. A story that ends at the Giudecca is a story that stops one page before the point.
• Treat the port perimeter as a workplace, because it is one. The quays that take cruise ships are container and general-cargo berths in ordinary commercial use.
• Be careful with the emissions claim in both directions. Shore power at Marghera is real, contracted and partly EU-funded; the port's own 2017 inventory also puts cruise vessels at roughly a seventh of the cluster's carbon dioxide, well behind commercial shipping at berth.
• Spend in Marghera if you are there, rather than treating it as the car park for somewhere else. That is the whole argument of this dossier in one practical form.

Nearby, and quieter

Fusina, on the lagoon edge about eight kilometres south, is the other half of the redistributed cruise model and also the place where the Brenta canal meets the water — the old crossing to Venice, now a ro-ro and cruise terminal contributing two of four berths. Just inland stands the Villa Foscari, the Palladian house long known as La Malcontenta, which has spent five hundred years watching whatever the mainland was doing that century. North of the industrial zone is Forte Marghera, at 45°28'29"N 12°15'45"E, the nineteenth-century fort that gave the district its name before there was a port. Chioggia, at the lagoon's southern end, is the third node of the new model and took 33,170 cruise passengers in 2025 against 49,754 the year before. And Venice is fifteen minutes away by train, where you can stand on the Zattere and watch a canal that no longer has ships in it.

Getting there, in order

• 1Venezia Mestre or Venezia Porto Marghera station
• ↓
• 2Marghera by bus or on foot; the cruise quays themselves are inside the port perimeter

Each leg is a separate booking and a separate chance to be weathered out. Build spare days into the chain, not onto the end of it.

Where it is

Porto Marghera and the Municipalità di Marghera, Comune di Venezia · 45.4511°N 12.2239°E · Open in Google Maps · OpenStreetMap

Key locations

• Marghera — the populated place, 28,622 residents in the GeoNames gazetteer
  45.4511°N 12.2239°E
• Venezia Porto Marghera station — the district's own railway station on the mainland line
  45.4722°N 12.2553°E
• Forte Marghera — the nineteenth-century fort the district and the port are named after
  45.4747°N 12.2625°E
• Fusina — second cruise berth cluster, two of four berths, operational from 2022
  45.4197°N 12.2569°E
• Canale della Giudecca — one of the three waterways closed to large ships from 1 August 2021
  45.4272°N 12.3289°E
• Bacino di San Marco — gazetteer records it as an anchorage; named in the ban
  45.4328°N 12.3406°E
• Chioggia — third node of the redistributed model, 33,170 cruise passengers in 2025
  45.2078°N 12.2928°E
• Porto di Chioggia — the port facility that took a temporary mooring in 2022
  45.2231°N 12.2769°E

Coordinates are for orientation and are accurate to roughly the width of the feature named, not to a doorway. Several of these points are inside protected areas or need a permit, a guide or a boat — read the access notes above before you plan a route to any of them.

Sources & further reading — checked 25 August 2026

1. Ministero della Cultura — comunicato 'Grandi Navi' (13 July 2021). The decree of 13 July 2021: the ban from 1 August on ships over 25,000 tonnes, hulls over 180 m, air draught over 35 m or fuel of 0.1% sulphur or more, through the Bacino di San Marco, Canale di San Marco and Canale della Giudecca; the port authority president as Commissario Straordinario for 'almeno quattro punti di attracco temporanei nell'area di Marghera'; and compensation for shipping companies and workers
2. AdSP Mare Adriatico Settentrionale — Relazione Annuale 2024. 547,587 cruise passengers at Venice in 2024, up 7.7%, and 49,754 at Chioggia; total Venice throughput 24,104,354 tonnes, up 3.5%; containers down 2.5% in TEU; 97 authority staff at 31 December 2024; and the PNRR complementary-fund project 'Elettrificazione Banchine Aree di Marghera'. Cruise figures are given for Venezia and Chioggia only, with no terminal breakdown
3. Port of Venice — 'Cruises in Venice: growth expected in 2024' (season note). 242 calls, 39 ships, 20 lines, 95% homeporting and 90% premium and luxury for 2024, forecast at 540,000 passengers against 497,000 in 2023; the quays in use at Marghera (Liguria, Lombardia), Fusina (two quays, a new 3,000 m² terminal at €4.9m within €6.3m) and San Basilio; and the Marittima restricted to vessels under 25,000 tonnes per Legislative Decree 103/21
4. Port of Venice — 'Statistical data on traffic for the year 2025' (19 January 2026). Venice at 25,289,943 tonnes in 2025, up 4.9%, and Chioggia at 901,065; 532,762 TEU, up 11.2%; and cruise passengers of 617,454 across the system, with Venice at 584,284, up 6.7%, and Chioggia declining to 33,170
5. AdSP Mare Adriatico Settentrionale — Port of Venice traffic bulletin, fourth quarter 2025 (PDF). The underlying table setting 547,587 and 584,284 cruise passengers side by side with a difference of 36,697 and a rate of 6.7%, and Chioggia at 49,754 and 33,170; and the confirmation that the bulletin reports cruise passengers at port level only, with no berth or terminal split
6. Port of Venice — 'Growing traffic for the Veneto Port System' (28 April 2026). The twelve months to March 2026: Venice above 25 million tonnes, up 4.4%, the system above 26 million, about 540,000 TEU up 9.8%, and more than 621,000 cruise passengers with Venice up 8.3% and Chioggia at 33,261 — a rolling-year measure that runs alongside the calendar-year series
7. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere a Venezia — home. Fulvio Lino Di Blasio as Commissario Straordinario under decree 103/2021 converted by Law 125/2021; the Liguria and Lombardia quays completed in 2022 and a Chioggia mooring the same year; up to five temporary moorings planned in the Marghera area; €158 million of intervention; and 2027 as the completion target
8. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'The project'. The four workstreams — temporary moorings, dredging of the Vittorio Emanuele and Malamocco–Marghera canals, accessory works and research — and the year-by-year appropriations: €2m in 2021, €9m in 2022, €15m in 2023, €42m in 2024, €55m in 2025 and €35m in 2026
9. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'Temporary moorings in Marghera'. The Liguria quay at the PSA Vecon terminal and the Lombardia quay at the TIV terminal upgraded and made available for the 2022 cruise season; up to five moorings envisaged in Porto Marghera by 2026; and a feasibility study for a new maritime station on the north side of the Canale Nord
10. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'Fusina terminal'. Fusina operational from the 2022 cruise season, contributing two of the four berths available, designed to separate cruise passenger, provisioning and baggage flows from the ro-ro traffic of cars and articulated vehicles already using the site, within the limits of decree 103/2021
11. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'Purchase of area for the new passenger terminal at the North Canal completed and work begun on wharf electrification' (7 July 2025). About ten hectares on macro-island 1 of Porto Marghera bought from Società Intermodale Marghera s.r.l. for €16 million; a terminal of roughly 10,000 m² over two levels serving two ships up to 300 m, costed above €67 million for the 2028 season; a 40,000 m² car park; and cold ironing contracted to NBI S.p.A. at €18.5 million within a €29 million Next Generation EU allocation
12. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'A new cruise model is born in Venice' (30 Nov 2022). Commissioner Di Blasio's stated objective of capacity for one million cruise passengers at Venice and Chioggia by 2027, ninety per cent of them homeporting; the 2022 baseline of about 240,000 passengers across more than 200 calls; and the planned Porto Marghera passenger terminal on the north bank of the Canale Nord with two associated berths
13. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'North Canal – North Bank Terminal' (11 July 2025). The environment ministry's notification of 7 July 2025 that the environmental impact assessment for two wharves, their aprons and a passenger terminal at the Canale Nord north bank was admissible, with public comment closing on 6 August 2025
14. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — 'Dredging of the Malamocco-Marghera Canal' (8 July 2025). Confirmation that the EIA for dredging the industrial channel that carries large ships from the Malamocco inlet to Marghera was admitted on 7 July 2025, with comment closing 6 August 2025 — the works file carries no published sediment volumes or costs on this page
15. Commissario Straordinario per le Crociere — press area index. The chronology of the programme from 2022 to 2025: the Lombardy and Liguria tender of February 2023, the Marittima dredging award of February 2024, the preliminary purchase agreement of July 2024 for over ten hectares at Porto Marghera, and the national EIA commission's Venice inspection of 1 July 2025
16. AdSP Mare Adriatico Settentrionale — DEASP, energy and environmental planning document (PDF). The port cluster carbon inventory on a 2017 baseline: about 170,482 tCO2 in total, with cruise vessels at 18,147 tonnes at berth and 6,878 manoeuvring, commercial ships at 87,001 and 25,816, internal road transport at 15,182, terminal equipment at 15,834 and rail at 431
17. AdSP Mare Adriatico Settentrionale — environmental monitoring. The permanent noise-control network running since May 2021 with four fixed Class I sound level meters at Venice, Marghera, Fusina and Chioggia plus mobile units for mooring and transit measurements, under a framework agreement with the University of Padua signed 9 April 2020; and a long-standing fixed air quality station at Fusina whose data are held by ARPAV
18. AdSP Mare Adriatico Settentrionale — energy transition and DEASP. The DEASP described as the carbon-footprint assessment underpinning the port's energy transition, with dock electrification, electric mobility, LNG and the Venice Hydrogen Valley listed as the instruments, partly financed through the national recovery plan
19. Port of Venice — 'New industrial plastic recycling investment in Marghera thanks to the Simplified Logistics Zone' (20 April 2026). Eco+Eco s.r.l. of the VERITAS group investing about €34 million — €22 million in plant, €12 million in infrastructure — on more than 41,000 m² of the former Alcoa area on Via della Geologia, creating around a hundred jobs over roughly two years of construction
20. UNESCO World Heritage Centre — Venice and its Lagoon (C 394). Inscription in 1987 under all six cultural criteria, a property area of 70,176.4 hectares, and the sequence of state-of-conservation examinations in 1989, 1990, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025
21. UNESCO — Decision 44 COM 7B.50, Venice and its Lagoon (2021). The Committee welcoming the measures banning ships over 25,000 gross tons from 1 August from the San Marco basin and the San Marco and Giudecca channels, and noting approval for a temporary mooring of large ships alongside a long-term solution prioritising the option outside the lagoon altogether
22. UNESCO — Decision 45 COM 7B.189, Venice and its Lagoon (2023). The Committee reconfirming the ban, requesting studies of environmental impacts, asking Italy to 'continue to prioritise the option of redirecting large ships to other more suitable ports', welcoming the experimental entry fee and booking system, and setting a reporting deadline of 1 December 2024
23. UNESCO — Decision 47 COM 7B.113, Venice and its Lagoon (2025). The Committee welcoming continued enforcement of the ban, requiring environmental assessment before port development, asking Italy to consider prioritising redirection of large ships to other ports, and warning that without urgent coordinated action the property could come to meet the criteria for inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger
24. Italy — State of conservation report on Venice and its Lagoon submitted to UNESCO (2024). Italy's own account of decree 103/2021 with all four thresholds; 'construction of no more than 5 temporary moorings in the Marghera area, 2 of which will be available for the 2022 cruise season'; the capacity split of 700,000 at Porto Marghera's North Canal terminal, 250,000 at Venice's cruise terminal and 50,000 at Chioggia against about 2 million before the decree; the €5 access fee from 25 April to 14 July 2024; and the outside-lagoon tender timetable
25. Italy — State of conservation report on Venice and its Lagoon submitted to UNESCO (2026). Italy describing a new cruise model that 'excludes large ships from the lagoon, uses widespread docks in Marghera and Chioggia for medium and small ships, halves the number of passengers, and applies cold ironing'; two temporary docks planned in the Marghera industrial area; new docks outside the lagoon only after approval of a new port master plan; and the access fee extended to 54 days in 2025 and 60 days in 2026
26. Italy — State of conservation report on Venice and its Lagoon submitted to UNESCO (2022). The two 2021 emergency measures set out together: Law Decree 45/2021 providing for a competition of ideas for docking points outside the lagoon, and Law Decree 103/2021 declaring the waterways a national monument and banning transit; up to five temporary docking points in the Marghera area, three built by summer 2022; and a competition for berths for passenger ships above 40,000 gross tonnage with a procedure deadline of 30 June 2023
27. UNESCO World Heritage Committee — WHC/21/44.COM/7B.Add, state of conservation working document. The World Heritage Centre's own record of the June 2019 collision between the cruise ship MSC Opera and a river barge in the Giudecca Canal, set alongside the 2012 Costa Concordia grounding as the safety background to the 2021 decree, and the proposal of alternative moorings in the industrial area of Marghera
28. UNESCO World Heritage Committee — WHC/23/45.COM/7B.Add, state of conservation working document. The 2023 analysis for Venice, recording that the property 'continues to face serious threats from cruise ship traffic and related infrastructure development' and concern over cumulative impacts on the lagoon's integrity and Outstanding Universal Value, ahead of draft decision 45 COM 7B.189
29. Comune di Venezia / Venezia Unica — contributo di accesso, frequently asked questions. The fee at €5 if paid by the fourth-last day before access and €10 within three days or at a tobacconist; the 08:30–16:00 window; the 2026 day list running in blocks from early April to 26 July; exemption without voucher for residents of the Comune di Venezia, people born in Venice, residents of the Veneto and under-fourteens; and the enabling provisions in Legislative Decree 23/2011 art. 4(3-bis), Law 145/2018 and Law 122/2010
30. Comune di Venezia / Venezia Unica — 'Cos'è il contributo di accesso'. The charge applying to entry to the Città antica rather than to the Comune as a whole, with transit areas such as the Ponte della Libertà, Piazzale Roma and the railway station excluded, and the notice that the 2026 trial ended and no payment or exemption is required thereafter
31. Comune di Venezia — contributo di accesso, official service page. The Comune's own statement that the trial period for 2026 ended and that from 27 July the access fee no longer applies, with any future application resting with the city's governing bodies — the primary basis for treating the fee as an experiment rather than a settled instrument
32. ARPAV — Siti contaminati (Veneto environmental agency). The definitions of contamination thresholds (CSC) and risk thresholds (CSR); municipalities running ordinary remediation procedures in the Veneto; the Region competent inside the lagoon drainage basin under regional law 19/2013; and the SIN of Venezia–Porto Marghera falling under national ministerial competence
33. ISPRA — Siti di interesse nazionale (SIN). 42 national-interest contaminated sites in Italy covering a little over 148,000 hectares of land, 0.49% of the national territory, with roughly 76,000 hectares of sea inside some perimeters and ten sites re-perimetered to exclude areas no longer qualifying
34. Comune di Venezia — Servizio Statistica e Ricerca, serie storiche della popolazione. A resident population of 251,294 for the Comune di Venezia at 31 December 2025, and the four published historical series — by zone from 1871, by quartiere from 1997, total and native from 2010, and by locality from 2001 — all released as spreadsheet files rather than as web tables
35. Comune di Venezia — le Municipalità. The six Municipalità of the Comune di Venezia — Chirignago Zelarino, Favaro Veneto, Lido Pellestrina, Marghera, Mestre Carpenedo and Venezia Murano Burano — establishing that Marghera is an administrative division of the same municipality as the historic centre, not a separate town
36. GeoNames gazetteer — Marghera and Porto Marghera features, Italy. Marghera as a populated place of 28,622 at 45°27'04"N 12°13'26"E; Venezia Porto Marghera railway station at 45°28'20"N 12°15'19"E; Forte Marghera at 45°28'29"N 12°15'45"E; and the Canale Malamocco Marghera and Canale di Porto Marghera as named waterways
37. GeoNames gazetteer — Fusina, Veneto, Italy. Fusina as a populated place in the comune of Mira at 45°25'11"N 12°15'25"E, with the Canale di Fusina, Canale Vecchio di Fusina and Canale Nuovo di Fusina as separate gazetteer entries — the verified fix for the second cluster of cruise berths named in the decree's aftermath
38. GeoNames gazetteer — Canale della Giudecca and Giudecca, Venice. The Canale della Giudecca as a named canal at 45°25'38"N 12°19'44"E and the Giudecca island at 45°25'30"N 12°19'35"E with a population of 4,792 — one of the three waterways the decree closes, fixed to a coordinate
39. GeoNames gazetteer — Bacino di San Marco, Venice. The Bacino di San Marco recorded as an anchorage at 45°25'58"N 12°20'26"E — the second of the three named waterways, and the only one of the three the gazetteer classifies as a place where ships stop rather than pass
40. GeoNames gazetteer — Chioggia and Porto di Chioggia, Veneto. Chioggia as the seat of a third-order administrative division with a population of 49,259 at 45°12'28"N 12°17'34"E, and Porto di Chioggia as a port facility at 45°13'23"N 12°16'37"E — the third node of the redistributed cruise model

Official and scientific bodies are the authority for safety, regulatory and scientific claims. Commercial operators are used only for practical detail such as tour length, meeting points and indicative pricing — never for a safety or scientific statement.