George MandrovnyMurano or Burano: Burano, unless glass is your thing
- One island? Burano, for the painted houses, the lace and lunch. Pick Murano if glass is what you came for.
- With two days or less in Venice, maybe neither. The islands want a day of their own, and two days barely cover Venice itself.
- The boat: line 12 from its first stop, Fondamente Nove, about 9 minutes to Murano and about 40 to Burano on the daytime runs. Buy the €25 24-hour pass.
- The trap is the hop: on Murano, line 12 stops only at Murano Faro, pier "A", never at Murano Colonna.
Murano or Burano (or Burano or Murano, depending on which you heard of first) comes down to glass. Burano is the island for color, lace and a long lunch, and Murano earns its place if glass is why you came. One boat line strings them into a single day, so with a full day, take both, in the right order.
The honest no first. On a first trip of a day and a half or two, the lagoon costs you Venice: the backstreets, the quiet churches with a masterpiece on the wall and nobody in front of it. I'd keep the day in Venice. Give Venice three days or more and one of them belongs to the islands. Then the two are not equals. Murano is quick unless you love glass, and Burano is the one that ends up as your phone's lock screen.
The boat to Murano and Burano: line 12 and the pier letters
The vaporetto (waterbus) to Murano and Burano is ACTV line 12 from Fondamente Nove: about 9 minutes to Murano and about 40 to Burano, every 20 minutes from 10:00 to 17:20. One line does both islands, and the thing to get right is the letter on the pier.
How to get to Murano and Burano from Venice depends on where you start; the table gives the line and the pier from three starting points.
| Start | To Murano | To Burano |
|---|---|---|
| Fondamente Nove | Line 12 from pier "A" to Murano Faro "A", or 4.1 / 4.2 from pier "B" to Murano Colonna and on to Murano Museo (Faro or Colonna in about 9 min by day) | Line 12 from pier "A", about 40 min |
| Train station (Ferrovia) | Line 3, about 20 min to the first Murano stop, daytime only (last loop 18:21 from Piazzale Roma) | Line 3 to Murano Faro, pier "B", then line 12 from Murano Faro "A" |
| San Marco (San Zaccaria) | Line 4.1, about 40 min | Line 14 via Lido and Punta Sabbioni, about 1 hour, roughly hourly, to Burano "B" |
Between the islands it is line 12 only, from Murano Faro "A": not Colonna, and not the Faro "B" pier other lines use. Daytime boats call at Mazzorbo and end at Burano, skipping Torcello. Back from Burano, line 12 leaves every 20 minutes from 11:12 to 18:12, then at 18:25 and every 30 minutes to 20:25, and later ones run after that. Every one calls at Murano Faro "A" on the way. All of them are on ACTV's line 12 timetable, a PDF.
⚠️ Warning
Line 12 boards at Fondamente Nove "A" and at Murano Faro "A". On Burano, daytime boats land at "C", but the ones leaving Fondamente Nove from 04:40 to 09:40 land at "B". Every line 12 boat back to Venice leaves Burano "C", and the line 9 shuttle to Torcello leaves from "A".
A single ride is €9.50 for 75 minutes; the 24-hour pass is €25, counted from first validation, not to midnight, and covers every ACTV waterbus except lines 16 and 19, the Casinò line and Alilaguna. An islands day is at least three rides: out, the hop, back. Once Murano outlasts one 75-minute ticket, that's €28.50 on singles, so buy the pass and skip the math on the pier. Validate at the pier at every boarding, the hop included; a ticket bought on board is card only. Both fares are on ACTV's Venice fares page, in Italian.
No access fee is in force now: the 2026 trial ended, and from July 27 the fee no longer applies. Whether it returns after 2026 is up to the City of Venice, so check the city's access fee site before you go.
Murano, for the glass: the furnaces, the museum and the look-alike shops
What to do in Murano is glass: watch a blower at a working furnace, see the island's glass history in the Glass Museum, and shop with care. The Republic moved Venice's glassworks here in 1291 to contain the damage from the fires their furnaces started, a very Venetian fix: keep the glass, move the fire. Take the glass away and Murano is a quiet neighborhood with a lot of shop windows.
To watch a blower at work, pick a furnace licensed to use the Vetro Artistico Murano mark, the proof of origin explained below, and check its own page for when and how visitors can watch. Wave Murano Glass is one such licensee; its factory tour page takes bookings.
Many of the shops look alike, window after window, and prices climb fast. For a name house, Venini's boutique on Fondamenta Vetrai opens daily 09:30 to 18:00, with appointments on request, and the staff's passion for the glass is catching. Away from the glass, the Romanesque Duomo dei Santi Maria e Donato is worth a look. The parish posts its visiting hours on the basilica's page, in Italian.
The Glass Museum (Museo del Vetro), in Palazzo Giustinian and a museum since 1861, tells the island's glass history, and you need no tour for it. It opens daily, 10:00 to 18:00 April to October and to 17:00 November to March, last entry an hour before closing. Tickets are €15, or €20 for the islands ticket, which adds the Lace Museum and the Museo di Torcello (valid three months, one entry each); for both island museums that beats €22 on singles. Get off at Murano Museo, on lines 4.1 and 4.2 and, by day, line 3. From Fondamente Nove it's 4.1 from pier "B" to Museo "A"; line 12 doesn't stop there. The museum's tickets page lists both.
A glass lover gets the museum, a furnace and Venini, and the furnace is the reason to come: a blower turning a glowing gather on the end of a pipe, shaping it before it cools, close enough to the furnace mouth to feel the heat on your face. It is artistry at working speed, and nobody lingers there longer than they have to. Everyone else gets a walk along the canals, a look in a few windows and the next boat. Either way, avoid the middle of the day.
How to tell if Murano glass is real
To tell if Murano glass is real, look for the Vetro Artistico Murano sticker, an anti-counterfeit mark certifying the piece was made on Murano; only Murano glassmakers can apply for it. It answers the doubt you walk in with: that the vase in the window was made somewhere else and you are about to pay Murano prices for it.
The sticker carries the maker's code at the top and comes in red or blue, depending on the type of work. Since 2016 it also has a serial number and a data matrix code: scan it with the free Original Murano Glass app or any data-matrix reader, or type the code into the check site of Promovetro, the Murano consortium that manages the mark. The mark itself goes back to a 1994 Veneto regional law.
Where to buy Murano glass in Venice has a short answer: a shop on the consortium's authorized list, which covers Venice and Murano. To be on it, a shop needs at least 80% of the products it sells carrying the mark, and it shows a window decal with its list number.
Before you pay, ask for the sticker, check the code, and buy from a shop on the list. A piece without a sticker proves nothing either way; you are buying on the seller's word, which is a fine basis for a fridge magnet and a thin one for a chandelier. If a piece you already own leaves you wondering, the consortium answers questions about origin by email at info@muranoglass.com.
Burano: the painted houses, the lace and the lunch
Things to do in Burano come down to three: walk the painted houses along its small canals, see the Lace Museum in the island's old lace school, and sit down to risotto di gò (gò is a small lagoon fish) for lunch. None of it needs a map: on Burano the whole place is the sight.
Circle the whole island on foot. There is far more of it than the one stretch everyone photographs, and the quieter canals keep the same colors with fewer elbows. By midday, though, even out here it feels touristy, so the early hours are Burano's best; which boat gets you here for them is the day plan's job.
The Lace Museum sounds like the dutiful stop and turns out to be the day's good surprise. It holds about 200 pieces of Venetian lace from the 1500s to the 1900s, and you can see lacemakers at work there. Entry is €7, or start the €20 islands ticket here if the Glass Museum comes later in your day. Hours and tickets are on the Lace Museum's site.
For lunch, Da Romano on Via Galuppi is known for its risotto di gò, and it is open midday, 12:00 to 15:00, closed Tuesdays. Al Gatto Nero on Via Giudecca is the louder name, and its fish risotto earns the noise. It serves lunch Tuesday to Sunday, and although the room stays open to 17:00, the last booking is 14:45. Dinner is only Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, last booking 21:00, and on those nights it is the reason to keep Burano after the day crowd leaves. Book ahead on its reservations page.
⚠️ Warning
The Lace Museum is open 10:00 to 16:00 (last entry 15:30) and closed on Mondays. A Burano plan that saves it for the late afternoon finds the door shut, so fit it around lunch.
For lace to take home, Emilia, a Burano lace and linen house since 1970, keeps a small family museum inside its flagship store on Piazza Galuppi. Call ahead for its hours; the number is on Emilia's boutiques page.
Bussolai, ring-shaped Venetian cookies, are worth buying on Burano, and they travel home better than anything you were tempted by on Murano. Between lunch and the museum, Burano's middle of the day plans itself; the hours on either side are the real decision.
Torcello and Mazzorbo: the quiet islands next to Burano
Torcello is the quiet island five minutes from Burano on the line 9 shuttle. Its basilica, Santa Maria Assunta, dates from the 600s and was rebuilt in the 1000s, and its bell tower is 11th-century; turn around on the way out: the great Last Judgment mosaic is on the inside of the entrance wall. Once home to tens of thousands, the island now holds a few people, untended fields and vegetable gardens, and the emptiness is the point.
The daytime way over is line 9 from Burano pier "A". Per ACTV's posted timetable, it runs every 15 minutes from 09:30 to 17:45, and the last one back leaves Torcello at 17:55, the one clock on the island that matters. Check the basilica's hours and entry on its official page before you cross.
Go for the mosaic and the quiet, with time to spare after Burano. If you're using the islands ticket on the Museo di Torcello (the museum, not the basilica), check its opening hours with the museum before you plan the shuttle around it; its own site gives the phone number and email.
Mazzorbo is the stop before Burano on daytime line 12 boats, joined to Burano by a wooden footbridge, the Ponte Longo. Venissa there is a wine estate with its own vineyard, a restaurant, an osteria (a tavern) and rooms; check its opening hours before you go, and book from its site.
Getting off here and walking in is the better way to arrive on Burano, away from its pier.
I got off at Mazzorbo on purpose, on a sunny September morning around ten, to stay clear of the crowd at Burano's main pier. Along the Mazzorbo canal there was no one but a few people walking and fishing boats tied up at the quay. The bridge was nearly empty, the boards knocking dully underfoot, the lagoon flat and wide on both sides; from the top, Mazzorbo's green banks fell behind me and Burano's painted fronts rose straight out of the water ahead, packed tight. Then the steps ended on Burano's paving, and the quiet ended with them: tour groups, voices from the open cafés, colors almost too loud after all that water.
Both add-ons belong to a full day, not a half one; where they fit depends on which island you start with.
The day: which island first, and when to be on the boat
A day on Murano and Burano works in either order, with line 12 for the hop: Murano in the morning and Burano into the evening, or Burano on an early boat and Murano on the way back. The hour matters more than the order.
Glass first suits the museum-goer: line 4.1 out to Murano Museo for the Glass Museum at opening, then the 4.2 from Murano Museo "B" to Murano Faro "B" and line 12 from Faro "A" to Burano, in time for lunch and the Lace Museum before it shuts. Add Torcello if there's time before the last shuttle back, then stay on Burano into the evening. The early boat suits the crowd-avoider: line 12 straight to Burano, on the water by about 9:30, for Burano before the crowd and the Lace Museum soon after it opens. Then line 12 back from "C", off at Murano Faro "A" for the afternoon. Short of time? One island, half a day, no apology needed.
You don't need a tour: the public boat does both islands at your own pace on the 24-hour pass. A tour makes sense only if you want the day handled, a boat to yourself, or Torcello without the change at Burano. Before booking, check which islands are included and whether Torcello is one, how long you get on each, and the departure hour, since an early one beats the crowd.
Coming back can take a while: there may be a line for the boat at Burano "C", so leave slack at the end of the day instead of aiming at the last daytime departure.
Later line 12 boats leave Burano "C" at 21:10, 21:55, 23:10 and 00:10, all calling at Murano Faro "A". Sleeping on Murano and eating in Venice: line 4.1 leaves Fondamente Nove pier "B" for Murano until the 23:22, and line 12's last from there is the 22:25. The islands go quiet at night, which is either the point or the problem; check these boats against your dinner plans before you book.
Murano and Burano FAQ
- Murano or Burano: which one if I only have time for one?
- Burano, for the painted houses, the Lace Museum and lunch. Murano, if glass is why you came. With two days or less in Venice, maybe neither: Venice itself needs the time.
- Can you see Murano and Burano in one day?
- Yes, in either order, with line 12 for the hop between them. A full day also fits Torcello; one island alone fits in half a day.
- How do you get from Venice to Murano and Burano?
- ACTV line 12 from Fondamente Nove, pier "A": about 9 minutes to Murano and about 40 to Burano on the daytime runs. Buy the €25 24-hour pass.
- How can you tell if Murano glass is real?
- Look for the Vetro Artistico Murano sticker, which certifies the piece was made on Murano. Since 2016 it also has a serial number and a data matrix code you can check in the free Original Murano Glass app. Buy from a shop on the consortium's authorized list.
- Is Torcello worth adding to Burano?
- Yes, on a full day, for the quiet and the Last Judgment mosaic. Per ACTV's posted timetable, the line 9 shuttle leaves Burano pier "A" every 15 minutes from 09:30 to 17:45 and takes 5 minutes; the last one back leaves Torcello at 17:55.