Hello! I am Alvise Falier, second-rate economist by day, economic historian by training, Italian medievalist by night (and sometimes poster on Italian history between 1946 and 2001) all times Unione Venezia fan, and up until last week one of three and a half active members of r/VeneziaFC (the half-member is a bot). Why do I insist on the name Unione Venezia? Because this is r/AskHistorians, and we're going to go very in-depth.

But for the sake of people who might not be interested in an in-depth write up on a parenthesis in minor-league Italian football, the quick answer to your question is actually one of simple crowd control procedure which the prefecture (local police authority) has had in place for decades: the Island of St. Elena is connected to the rest of the old city by four bridges, all of which are barricaded by a police checkpoint on matchday. Both home and away fans are highly encouraged to reach the stadium via waterbus (the famed Vaporetti) on special matchday service departing from the island of Tronchetto and the Piazzale Roma at the far western edge of the city. The matchday service runs directly to the stadium without intermediate stops (nowadays the schedules for these special match-day Vaporetti are shared by the club and transit authority on Social Media, but in the past they were published in the local paper and posted on bulletins at the stadium and in the railway station).

As per protocols developed for the 1980 European Championship and revisited in the ensuing decades, organized away fans traveling to Venice by bus and train are escorted to the stadium by police much like in the rest of Italy. The only difference is that upon arriving on the Tronchetto (if traveling by bus) or at S. Lucia station (if traveling by train) they are ushered onto a vaporetto directed to the stadium. Likewise, visiting teams can be ushered onto a special vaporetto (the common solution in the lower divisions) or can make arrangements to traverse the city by private water taxi (the solution implemented by opponents in the Serie A and Serie B). Police blockades forcing visiting teams and their fans to reach S. Elena by water transit has led some to erroneously claim that the P. Penzo Stadium is exclusively reachable via water (Joe McGinnis makes this claim in the Miracle of Castel di Sangro, an otherwise excellent journalistic examination of Serie B football in the 1990s); the claim would be false if not for the police cordons.

Home fans residing in the historic center of Venice are free to traverse the police checkpoints and reach the stadium on foot, as are away fans who have made their own arrangements to watch the match independently of the organized groups and who have arrived several hours or a day ahead of the match (this means that yes, an organized group can potentially make arrangements to bypass the protocols set by the local Prefetto, however should they get caught the penalties as set by the sporting safety law of 1989 and its amendments are draconian). Nonetheless, numerous ordinary vaporetto routes are extended to terminate at S. Elena on match-day, discouraging spectators from traversing the old center even if they reside or lodge in the lagoon.

At the end of the match, the protocol at the Penzo stadium mirrors that in every other stadium in Italy: organized visiting fan groups are made to stay in the stadium until other spectators have dispersed, and are then ushered back onto vaporetti returning to the railway station or bus parking without intermediate stops.

The small size of the Penzo, which reached its largest size in the late 1990s at 16.500 spectators (of which only a small proportion will be away fans, even though larger crowds have been recorded in past decades when regulations were more lax) has simplified the work performed by local authorities to prevent match-day crowds from dispersing in the city center. Ordinarily, home and away organized fan groups are not allowed within sight of each other until they are inside the stadium, where they are seated at opposite ends of the ground.

But these arrangements no doubt lessen the matchday experience. Fans milling about other stadiums in Italy can at the very least enjoy a salamella sandwich from one of the trucks that invariably pop up, while in the newest stadiums they can enjoy innumerable other amenities. However in Venice, spectators are shooed in and out without ceremony, discouraging the club from augmenting the matchday experience even if it could (the stadium, like most others in Italy, is rented from the city).

Have there been efforts to move the club's home to a more comfortable location on the mainland? Yes! The idea has been recycled by every single ownership group which has invested in the club since the 1980s, however none has been successful in the endeavor.

We will get into that after the jump: