Four museums, one day — and the three most people never use
What your Doge's Palace ticket actually includes
The ticket is not only the palace. It also admits you to three more museums at the other end of St Mark's Square, one of which is among the finest Renaissance interiors in Italy and is usually almost empty. Here is exactly what you get.
Book your Doge's Palace entry ↗The four museums
A Doge's Palace ticket is really a St Mark's Square Museums ticket. It covers the Palazzo Ducale itself, the Correr Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, and the Monumental Rooms of the Marciana Library. The latter three are connected internally and entered together through the Correr, at the western end of Piazza San Marco, opposite the basilica.
The Correr Museum
The civic museum of Venice, occupying the Napoleonic wing across the end of the square. Neoclassical state rooms, a substantial picture gallery with work by Bellini and Carpaccio, and a collection of Venetian material culture — coins, globes, ship models, the platform shoes that Venetian women once wore. It is a good, unhurried museum and it is never busy.
The National Archaeological Museum
Greek and Roman sculpture, much of it from the collection given to the Republic by Cardinal Domenico Grimani in the sixteenth century. Modest in size and easily done in forty minutes. Its real interest is that these were the antiquities Venetian artists actually studied, so you are looking at the source material for a great deal of what you saw in the palace.
The Marciana Library
The one to make time for. Sansovino's library building faces the palace across the Piazzetta, and its main hall has a ceiling of twenty-one tondi by Veronese, Tintoretto and their contemporaries, with Titian involved in the selection. It is one of the great rooms of the Venetian Renaissance. On a summer afternoon there can be a thousand people queuing across the square for the palace and a dozen in here.
How long the ticket is valid
One day, for a single admission to each museum. So in principle you can do all four on the same day; in practice, doing the palace properly takes two to three hours and the others another two, which is a demanding day in the Venetian heat. Many visitors use the palace and the Marciana and let the other two go.
What is not included
St Mark's Basilica is a separate ticket and a separate queue, and so is its Campanile — neither has anything to do with this ticket, despite standing in the same square. The Secret Itineraries tour of the palace is also separate. The audio guide is a separate rental. And this ticket is not the Venice Museum Pass, which is a broader, longer, more expensive product covering around a dozen museums for six months.
Which ticket you should actually buy
If Venice is a short stop and the palace is the thing you came for, this ticket. If you are in Venice for several days and intend to work through Ca' Rezzonico, Ca' Pesaro, the glass museum on Murano and the rest, the Museum Pass will be better value. The dividing line is roughly whether you plan to visit more than four civic museums.
A sensible way to use it
Book the palace for the first slot of the morning and do it while the crowd is still thin. Come out around midday, eat somewhere away from the square, and use the Correr and the Marciana in the early afternoon while the palace is at its worst. You will have seen more, in more comfort, than anyone who did it the other way round.