What Venezia FC’s promotion to Serie A means for tourism in Italy’s La Serenissima

Football may not seem an obvious reason to visit Venice, but with its team now in the top league, a visit offers the chance to see Italy’s top players in action at the modest Stadio Penzo

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Venice’s hidden gem, the Pier Luigi Penzo stadium, dating from 1913 and with a capacity of just 11,000, looking out on the Venice lagoon and its islands, surrounded by a marina, ancient church and houses of the Sant’Elena neighbourhood. Photo: Venezia FC

John Brunton

Published: 12:45pm, 15 Sep 2024Updated: 12:42pm, 19 Sep 2024

Venice tempts travellers from across the globe with its gondolas gliding along romantic canals; sumptuous Baroque and Gothic palaces; and museums filled with masterpieces by Canaletto, Titian and Tintoretto. But now there is an added, perhaps surprising, reason to plan a holiday to the Italian city: the chance to see the superstars of Serie A.

More used to battling relegation or bankruptcy, Venezia Football Club managed to gain promotion to the top Italian league in April, and with the 2024/25 season having just kicked off, there is now a rare opportunity to combine a weekend break in a Unesco World Heritage city with a top-flight soccer match, maybe even against the likes of AC Milan (the match scheduled for April 27), Napoli (March 16), Juventus (May 25) or the reigning champions, Inter Milan (January 12).

Supporters at a Venezia FC game at the stadium. Photo: John Brunton

Furthermore, a home game offers a rare opportunity in this tourist-swamped city to experience something essentially Venetian, in the company of boisterous but welcoming tifosi (Italian for “super fans”) cheering on this proud team of minnows in the distinctive local dialect, in a stadium right in the heart of Venice, surrounded by lagoon and canals.

Opened in 1913, Stadio Penzo is Italy’s second-oldest football ground, and probably the only one in the world at which supporters and players arrive by boat. Although the capacity is just 11,000, the intimate atmosphere is often electric, especially if you’re in the raucous Curva Sud, home stand of the Ultra home supporters.

A ritual at the start of each match – supporter groups from Venice and the surrounding region create a mosaic of their distinctive scarves in the Curva Sud stand of Stadio Penzo. Photo: John Brunton

Standing beneath swirling green, orange and black banners emblazoned with the Lion of Venice, I recognise burly gondoliers and scholarly students, butchers, barmen and chefs, Murano glass workers and tattooed water-taxi pilots, all bellowing out bawdy football chants. Mums and dads bring their kids from an early age, while hundreds of Venetians who have been priced out of the Serenissima and live in the surrounding countryside attend matches to reconnect with their Venezianità (all that is related to being Venetian).

“I am proudly born and bred in Venice”, says waiter Igor Pajalich, taking a break from cheering wildly as his team go on the attack. “And for all the people I know here, coming to see a match at Stadio Penzo, it is just the best day out, win, draw or lose.”