Tessera
Tessera is a hamlet in the mainland area of the municipality of Venice, best known for being home to Venice Marco Polo Airport, th...
Updated 13 July 2026
The story
The story of Tessera
Tessera and Marco Polo Airport
The name Tessera is inseparably linked to Venice Marco Polo Airport, named after the famous Venetian merchant and traveller. It is the main airport in Veneto and one of the busiest in Italy, with connections to European and intercontinental destinations. Its presence has transformed what was once a small agricultural hamlet on the edge of the lagoon into an infrastructure hub of international significance, while the surrounding area still bears the marks of the Veneto countryside and the lagoon's edge. For visitors to eastern Veneto, Tessera is often the first physical contact with the territory, even before reaching Venice itself.
Location on the northern lagoon
Tessera sits on the northern edge of the Venice Lagoon, an area marked by a fragile, ever-changing ecosystem of channels, salt marshes and shallow water. This borderland position between the mainland and the lagoon gives the local landscape a very different character from Venice's urban core: open spaces, grassy embankments and wide views over the water prevail here. The northern lagoon is less known to mass tourism than the San Marco basin, but it retains an authentic charm tied to nature and to the slower rhythms of fishing and traditional hydraulic maintenance, elements still visible along the channels that cross the area.
Connections to Venice and the hinterland
Several transport options depart from Tessera airport toward Venice: public ferries and private water-taxis reach the historic centre by crossing the lagoon, offering a particularly scenic entry into the city by water. Alternatively, buses and road connections quickly reach Piazzale Roma and Mestre, from where the Veneto's rail and motorway network can be accessed. This combination of connections makes Tessera a genuine multimodal hub, channelling tourist and commercial flows toward Venice, the Venetian mainland and other cities in the region such as Treviso and Padua.
The landscape of salt marshes and embankments
Around Tessera stretch the salt marshes of the northern lagoon, low islands of exposed land covered in halophyte vegetation that emerge and submerge with the rhythm of the tides. These environments, essential to the lagoon's hydrogeological balance, host rich birdlife, including herons, little egrets and other waterbirds that find refuge in the surrounding channels and wetlands. The embankments bordering the channels offer useful paths for observing this ecosystem up close, one that is often less explored than the lagoon's more famous destinations, yet of great interest to anyone wishing to understand the environmental complexity underpinning the entire Venice area.
A gateway to Venice
For most international visitors, Tessera represents the first step of a journey toward Venice, a role that has shaped the hamlet's very identity over the years. Around the airport, accommodation facilities, car parks and services have developed to welcome the constant flow of transiting passengers, without entirely erasing the area's peripheral, semi-rural character. This threshold function makes Tessera a place of passage rather than prolonged stay, but precisely for this reason it offers a privileged vantage point on the contrast between the modernity of transport and the age-old permanence of the lagoon landscape, already visible from the plane's windows during landing.
What to discover nearby
From the area around Tessera, it is easy to organise excursions to some of the most celebrated destinations of the Venetian lagoon. Venice, with its canals, historic palaces and Piazza San Marco, can be reached quickly by water. The islands of Murano and Burano, known respectively for glassmaking and for their colourful houses and lace, offer a further immersion in lagoon culture, well connected via boat services that also depart from the northern lagoon area. Those with more time available can also explore other smaller islands of the northern lagoon, less frequented but equally representative of Venice's more authentic and less touristy identity.
Experiences not to miss
- Reaching Venice by ferry or water-taxi directly from the airport, crossing the lagoon
- Observing the salt marshes and channels of the northern lagoon along the embankments near Tessera
- Arranging a day trip to the islands of Murano and Burano starting from the northern lagoon area
- Stopping in Mestre and Piazzale Roma for connections to the Veneto hinterland
- Admiring the view over the lagoon and salt marshes during landing or take-off from Marco Polo Airport
Routes · Trovido Route
