A full ticket to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco costs 12 EUR in 2026, and a combined ticket covering the Scuola and the church of San Rocco across the campo costs 14 EUR, sold only at the Scuola's own entrance. The hall is open every day from 09.30 to 17.30, with the ticket office closing at 17.00 (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
Inside is the painting cycle Jacopo Tintoretto worked on for more than twenty years: 33 pictures in the upper Sala Capitolare, finished in the summer of 1581, the Crucifixion and the Passion scenes in the adjoining Sala dell'Albergo, and eight large canvases on the life of the Virgin in the ground-floor hall. The Scuola sells no tickets online and runs no guided tour service of its own, so you buy at the door, and a multimedia guide on your own phone costs 5 EUR. The Venice Museum Pass does not cover the Scuola, because the pass applies to the twelve civic museums and San Rocco is not one of them (Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2026). The admission charge is described by the Scuola as a contribution to the restoration of its own building and church and to the confraternity's charitable work.
How much does a ticket to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco cost in 2026?
The Scuola publishes three separate tariffs: one for the hall, one for the church, and one combined. For the Scuola Grande alone, full admission is 12 EUR and the reduced rate is 10 EUR, which applies to visitors over 70, Touring Club members and Rolling Venice holders. Groups pay 10 EUR a head with one free place for every 20 participants. Under 18s pay 3 EUR, a rate that covers ages 8 to 18, school parties (again one free place per 20) and Rolling Venice holders. Students under 26 pay 8 EUR, and a family ticket for two adults and their minor children is 26 EUR. Admission is free for visitors with a disability and one companion, for Catholic clergy, for children under 8 and for accredited guides. A multimedia guide, used on your own device through a QR code or login, adds 5 EUR.
The church of San Rocco on its own is 3.50 EUR full and 2 EUR reduced, the reduction covering ages 8 to 26 and groups of more than 20. Residents of the Comune di Venezia enter free, as do clergy, children under 8 and visitors with a disability and a companion. Its multimedia guide is 1.50 EUR (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
Scuola Grande di San Rocco opening hours, and why the church differs
The Scuola Grande opens daily from 09.30 to 17.30, and the ticket office shuts at 17.00. It opens every day of the year apart from three dates: New Year's Day, Christmas Day and Easter. The administrative office keeps separate hours, Monday to Friday from 10.00 to 12.30.
The church keeps a different timetable, and the difference matters on a Sunday. From Monday to Saturday it opens 09.30 to 17.30 with last entry at 17.00, while on Sunday it opens only from 13.30 to 17.30, again with last entry at 17.00. Unlike the hall, the church opens every day of the year, including religious and national holidays, with shortened hours of 09.30 to 12.30 on New Year's Day and Christmas Day. A Sunday morning visit therefore gets you into the Scuola and not into the church, so a combined ticket is worth buying only for a Sunday afternoon.
One wrinkle to check before you travel. A banner at the top of every page of the official site reads open every day, 09.30 to 17.30, but the Scuola also keeps a calendar of extraordinary closures that overrides it. On the day this page was checked that calendar listed 15 November 2026 as closed, and 29 November 2026 as open 09.30 to 14.30 with last entry 30 minutes before closing (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
Is the Scuola Grande di San Rocco included in the Venice Museum Pass?
No. The Museum Pass issued by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia costs 50 EUR full and 25 EUR reduced, is valid for six months and allows one admission to each museum on its list. That list runs: the Doge's Palace, the combined itinerary of the Museo Correr with the Museo Archeologico Nazionale and the monumental rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana, Ca' Rezzonico, Palazzo Mocenigo, Carlo Goldoni's House, Ca' Pesaro with the Oriental Art Museum, MUVEC, the Glass Museum on Murano, the Lace Museum on Burano, the Natural History Museum, the Fortuny Museum and the Torcello Museum, with the Clock Tower excluded. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco appears nowhere on it (Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2026).
What does cut the price at San Rocco is a Rolling Venice card, Touring Club membership or being over 70, each of which brings the hall down to 10 EUR. The combined ticket is the other saving, and a small one: paying separately comes to 15.50 EUR for the hall and the church, against 14 EUR combined. That combined ticket is sold at the Scuola Grande ticket desk only, so buy it before you cross the campo to the church (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
The ground floor and the staircase
You enter through the Sala Terrena, the wide rectangular hall divided into three aisles by two rows of columns. It was the last room to be decorated. Tintoretto came back to it in 1582, the year after he finished the hall upstairs, and the eight large canvases on its walls follow the life of the Virgin and the childhood of Christ: the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Presentation in the Temple, the Assumption, and Saint Mary of Egypt and Saint Mary Magdalene by the windows at the far end. The Circumcision was put in place in August 1587 and was the last picture he made for the room, with heavy involvement from his workshop and in particular from his son Domenico.
From there the Scalone climbs to the upper hall. The staircase you walk up is not the original. Antonio Abbondi, known as Scarpagnino, replaced an earlier brick and timber stair with the present imperial model of two lower flights under barrel vaults, a shared landing and a single central flight above. The design was adopted on 21 June 1545 and the work was completed in 1550 under Giangiacomo de' Grigi, after Scarpagnino died in 1549 (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
The Sala Capitolare and the Sala dell'Albergo
The upper hall, the Sala Capitolare, holds 33 paintings, completed in the summer of 1581. Three large canvases run down the centre of the ceiling and tell three stages of the journey towards the Promised Land: the Brazen Serpent, Moses striking water from the rock, and the Gathering of the Manna. Ten ovals of Old Testament episodes sit around them, along with eight rhomboidal chiaroscuri that were replaced in 1777 and 1778 by oil copies from Giuseppe Angeli. On the long walls, ten tall canvases of New Testament scenes are sized to the double windows they hang between, and the wall facing the presbytery carries San Rocco and San Sebastiano, the two saints invoked against plague. The altarpiece, the Apparition of San Rocco, was painted with Domenico's help and delivered in 1588.
The smaller Sala dell'Albergo off the upper hall was the committee room and the first space Tintoretto worked in. The central ceiling oval of San Rocco in glory went in during 1564, offered to the Scuola as a gift after the confraternity complained that it had asked for drawings. The Crucifixion followed in 1565, above the bench that hides the access to the strongboxes, and the Passion scenes on the entrance wall were finished between 1566 and the first months of 1567. Those three read from right to left: Christ before Pilate at the far right, the Ecce Homo above the door, and the Ascent to Calvary on the left (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
The carved allegories below the paintings
The panelling that lines the Sala Capitolare is worth as much attention as the ceiling, and it is far easier on the neck. Francesco Pianta carved the walnut dossals between 1657 and 1676, and he supplied his own titles for the figures, calling them hieroglyphs, in a long scroll held by the statue of Mercury to the left of the staircase door. The sequence he intended starts under Tintoretto's Adoration of the Shepherds and runs clockwise, setting vices against virtues: Melancholy as a sad man in a wide cloak, Honour as a young man with flag, chain and sceptre, Avarice with account books and coin bags at his belt, Ignorance with an almost caricatured face, Science as an old man reading at a lectern, and the Distinction of Good from Evil as a nude seen from behind.
Between the winged, chained and blindfolded Fury and the veiled figure of the Spy stands the piece most visitors stop at: a carved library of five shelves holding 64 volumes, complete with spectacles resting on the lowest book and a quill in its inkwell. The series closes with Cicero arguing for sculpture and, signed at length, an allegory of painting in which Pianta gave Tintoretto himself a near caricature. The eighteenth-century figures of Faith, Hope and Charity under the windows are by Francesco Bernardoni (Scuola Grande di San Rocco, 2026).
Guided tours, buying a ticket and getting there
Two practical points shape a visit here. The Scuola sells no tickets online, so there is no timed slot to book and no skip-the-line option from the institution itself. It also states plainly that it provides no in-house guided tour service, which is why any guided visit comes through an outside guide or operator. Accredited guides enter free, and the Scuola asks that groups of more than 30 people with a single guide use radio guides to avoid disturbing other visitors. If you would rather go round alone, the 5 EUR multimedia guide runs on your own phone through a QR code or login.
The Scuola gives no recommended visit length, so plan around the 17.00 ticket-office cut-off and, on a Sunday, around the church opening at 13.30. The address is San Polo 3052, on Campo San Rocco. The official directions put it three minutes from the San Tomà waterbus stop, five minutes from the Piazzale Roma bus terminal and eight minutes from Santa Lucia railway station. Lines 1 and 2 both call at San Tomà on the timetables in force from 2 November 2026 (ACTV, 2026). The basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari stands a few house numbers away at San Polo 3072 and charges separately, 8 EUR full and 5 EUR for visitors over 65 (Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 2026).
