Venice Italy airport, Aeroporto di Venezia-Tessera “Marco Polo”, is the main international airport for the city, named after the famous explorer, Marco Polo.
The airport, which is one of the top 10 airports in Italy, receives around 7 million passengers every year.
In Veneto region, in addition to the Marco Polo airport, there is also another major airport nearby, Venice-Treviso, which is primarily used by major low cost airlines for European routes.
Marco Polo international airport is located on the Venetian mainland, adjacent to the lagoon of Venice, however, near the village of Tessera, northeast from historical city center of Venice.
Links to the airport from the city are provided by buses, taxis, motorboats, and water buses.
Buses between Piazzale Roma in Venice and Marco Polo Airport are available from ACTV bus company, line no. 5 (yellow bus, city line) and ATVO, (blue buses).
You can also use taxis to get to Venice from the airport, or watr buses, which travel all the way to Saint Mark’s Square and the railway station Venezia Santa Lucia.
Marina for the water buses is located immediately southwest of the airport passenger terminal.
From Venice airport, destination that are primarily served include Italian and European cities, including, for example, London and Madrid. Airport of Treviso is used for similar routes by low cost airlines such as easyJet.
German airline Lufthansa flies to Venice from Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich, Air Berlin from Berlin-Tegel, Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart, while Austrian Airlines connects to the city of Vienna, and Swiss to Zurich.
If you are traveling from the U.S. to Venice, direct long-distance connections exist only to New York City, with Delta Air Lines. Other long-distance connections include Dubai (with Emirates) and Doha with Qatar Airways.
You may find seasonal connections to Venice from Atlanta (Delta Airlines), Philadelphia (U.S. Airways), Toronto (Air Transat), and Montreal (Air Transat).
In addition, there are seasonal charter flights to and from Venice. The airport is also a major hub for private jet and aircraft traffic.
Civilian air traffic service to Venice started initially in the 1920s.
Airfield in Venice Lido was actually the first commercial airport in Venice for conventional land planes, with many earlier services using seaplanes.
Venice Lido was established in 1915 as a military airfield and released in 1926 for civil air traffic. From the airport in Lido, one could take scheduled flights to Vienna, Munich (and on to as far as Berlin).
Following the renewed military use during the Second World War, scheduled civilian air service was initiated in 1947. The airfield quickly saw introduction to even the larger commercial aircrafts, despite its limits.
After some airlines decided in 1952 to seek out routes to the Treviso airport further away, it was decided that the airfield in Lido was not to be expanded. Instead, a new airport was built on the mainland, inaugurated to use in 1960.
The current airport terminal was completed in 2002.
There are plans by the Regional Government of Veneto to aggressively expand the Marco Polo airport, and strengthen its leading role in North-East of Italy.
Gradually, the airport will be linked not only to the regional rail network (Sistema Metropolitano Ferroviario Regional), but also to the high-speed network of the Italian Railways.