UK → Venice
The only Italian move that ends on a boat
Venice is unlike anywhere else we deliver, and it is worth being blunt about why. No vehicle crosses into the islands. Everything arrives at Tronchetto or Piazzale Roma, transfers to a boat, comes up a canal to the nearest landing point, and is then carried by hand through the calli and over the bridges to your door.
That is not a complication to be worked around. It is simply how Venice works, and it has to be in the plan and in the price from the beginning.
The water leg is arranged with a local operator and timed around the tide and the traffic on the canals. The final leg is people carrying things over bridges with steps. Both are normal here and both take time that a mainland move does not.
Every bridge between the landing point and your door is a flight up and a flight down. The number of bridges is the single biggest variable in a Venice delivery, and it is knowable in advance from the address.
High water affects what can be landed and when, particularly in autumn. It is planned around rather than gambled on, and we will move a date sooner than carry a household through a flooded calle.
The arrival leg
Down the Brenner and across the A4 to Mestre, then over the causeway to Tronchetto. That is as far as the lorry goes. From there it is a transfer onto a barge, a canal route to the nearest fondamenta, and porterage on foot.
Fewer full households than people imagine, and a lot of partial moves — an apartment being furnished, a studio being set up, a second home receiving the things that make it liveable. Full relocations are more often to Mestre or the mainland Veneto.
If your address is in Mestre, Marghera or anywhere on the terraferma, none of the above applies — it is an ordinary road delivery. Plenty of people move to the mainland precisely for that reason, and it is worth asking us the cost difference before you decide.
Everything up to the Italian border is the same for every destination on this site: collection at your UK address, export packing, the Channel crossing and the run through France. The route page sets that out in full, including which Alpine crossing suits which part of Italy.
The paperwork is the same too — a customs declaration, a detailed inventory and Transfer of Residence relief on your own used belongings. That is covered on the customs page. France appears on this site only as transit; if France is your destination rather than your motorway, our sister site france-removals.co.uk covers that corridor.
No. Nothing on wheels crosses into the historic islands. The load transfers to a barge at Tronchetto and is carried from the nearest landing point on foot. That is how every delivery in Venice works, including furniture shops'.
It adds time and a local operator to the job, and how much depends on the canal route and how many bridges sit between the landing point and your door. Both are established from the address before we quote.
Far easier, and considerably cheaper. If you are still choosing between the islands and the mainland, that difference is worth knowing about while it can still influence the decision.
Send the UK address, the Italian one and a rough room list. The access at the far end shapes the quote more than the distance does.