Doge's Palace tickets compared

Four ways to get in

The museum sells four things that include the palace. The standard St Mark's Square Museums ticket is the one most visitors want. Two guided tickets, the Secret Itineraries and the Doge's Hidden Treasures, add a live guide through rooms outside the standard route. The Museum Pass covers the palace along with many other city museums over six months. Tour operators and marketplaces package the same entries with extras of their own, so check what a listing adds before you pay. This guide follows the museum's own descriptions, which are the fair yardstick for comparing any of them.

What the standard ticket covers

The standard ticket is valid for the Doge's Palace and for the Correr Museum, the National Archaeological Museum and the monumental rooms of the Marciana National Library. The museum describes the Correr part as an integrated route on its first floor. The MUVE app audio guide is included in the museum's own ticket, in six languages: Italian, English, French, Spanish, German and Korean. Each ticket allows one entry, and the museum's regulations say you cannot re-enter a museum once you leave it. Plan the palace and the other museums as stretches of one continuous visit.

The standard route, in order

The museum describes a route that goes up and down rather than climbing floor by floor. It starts with the Museo dell'Opera, passes through the courtyard, continues to the loggia and the Doge's Apartments, then crosses the institutional chambers on the first and second floors. It finishes with the Armoury, the Picture Gallery and the Prisons, reached over the Bridge of Sighs, which holds two separate corridors of which visitors use one. You see the Great Council chamber, the largest room in the palace, and the New Prisons. The older cells are not on this route; they belong to the Secret Itineraries.

Read next: What to see inside the Doge's Palace

Secret Itineraries: what the extra ticket adds

This is a guided tour of about an hour and a quarter through rooms the standard route does not reach. It begins in the courtyard, through a narrow door to the Pozzi, the damp ground-floor cells. It climbs to the offices of the Ducal Notary and the Great Chancellor, then to the Torture Chamber and the Piombi cells under the lead roof, where both cells Casanova occupied have been reconstructed. After the attic it ends in the chambers of the State Inquisitors, whose ceiling Tintoretto painted, and the Three Head Magistrates. The ticket also includes the standard visit, unguided.

Read next: The Secret Itineraries tour — is it worth it?

Doge's Hidden Treasures: the private rooms

The second guided option starts at the Porta della Carta and goes into the doge's private wing beside the basilica. It passes the Foscara Terrace and Loggia, the Treasure Chamber with objects tied to the election of the doge, the Doge's Terrace, and a staircase hung with Titian's fresco of St Christopher. It ends in the Doge's Chapel and Antechapel, whose decoration was restored after conservation work. Like the Secret Itineraries it needs a reservation, runs for a limited number of visitors and is guided. The ticket again includes the standard visit without a guide.

Museum Pass: only for a longer stay

The Museum Pass is the museum network's cumulative ticket. It is valid for six months and allows one admission to each included museum, with no reservation required. Besides the palace and the Correr route it lists Ca' Rezzonico, Palazzo Mocenigo, Carlo Goldoni's House, Ca' Pesaro, MUVEC, the Glass Museum on Murano, the Lace Museum on Burano, the Natural History Museum, the Fortuny Museum and the Torcello Museum. The Clock Tower is not included. Choose it if you plan to visit several of these. For the palace alone, a standard ticket is the closer fit.

Reduced and free categories

The museum lists reduced admission for children aged 6 to 14, students aged 15 to 25 and visitors over 65, plus holders of the Venice Rolling Card or an ISIC card. Children aged 0 to 5 are admitted free. Its guided tickets add reductions for Venetian residents and for holders of other museum tickets, and the museum asks for valid ID with reduced categories. A booking page sells only the categories it lists, so check which ones appear for your date. Bring ID for anyone travelling on a reduced category, because staff are entitled to check tickets throughout the visit.

Entry times and booking direct

You can buy from the museum's own site or at the ticket office in the palace, and the museum is the reference for its rules. It has announced that holders of St Mark's Square Museums tickets without a specific entry time slot are admitted to the palace only from later in the day. So choose an option that shows an entry time for your date. The museum's regulations say tickets it sells are not refundable, except if the museum cancels or in a case of force majeure. Other sellers set their own cancellation terms, so read them before you pay. Guided tours exclude anyone more than 15 minutes late.

How to choose

Book the standard ticket if this is your first visit, you are happy with an audio guide, or you want to set your own pace. Add the Secret Itineraries if the prisons and the machinery of government interest you more than the painted state rooms. Add Hidden Treasures if you want the private rooms and the chapel. Take the Museum Pass if you will visit several city museums within six months. If a listing includes a live guide on the standard route, treat that as an extra from the operator, because the museum's own standard ticket comes with the audio app.

Who this isn't for

The two guided itineraries are not for children under 6, pregnant women, anyone with mobility problems, or anyone who suffers from claustrophobia, vertigo or cardio-respiratory conditions, according to the museum. The spaces are small, on different levels and linked by steep, narrow stairs. They are also a poor first choice if you only have a short time in Venice, because the standard visit already includes the Great Council chamber and the Bridge of Sighs. If you need step-free access, the museum calls the regular visit fully accessible but lists the Prisons and the Armoury as not accessible.