Free camping in Veneto

Veneto is Venice, and for a motorhome that is the least useful thing about it. The lagoon is the hardest place in the region to sleep in a van, and the coast either side of it runs on private campsites.

What Veneto does have is a clear split between the places that charge and the places that do not, and it maps onto the landscape. The towns and Lake Garda charge, sometimes steeply. The Lessinia hills east of Verona and the Dolomiti Bellunesi in the north mostly do not.

Where you pay

Verona is 15 euros a day at Porta Palio, 48 hours maximum, which for a city of that size is reasonable and it puts you a walk from the arena. Soave, in its complete medieval wall, is 14 a day for 20 pitches. Schio and Castelfranco Veneto both charge and both cap the stay at 48 hours. Calalzo di Cadore, at the top of the Piave valley, charges by the hour with a minimum. Malcesine on Garda charges by the hour too, at a higher rate once your vehicle is over a certain height, which is worth reading before you pull in with a 3.2m van.

None of that is unreasonable, but it adds up quickly if you drift from town to town without checking.

Where you mostly do not

The Verona hills follow a different model: free to park, metered for what you draw.

Illasi has 12 pitches, open all year and around the clock, free to sit on, with power at a euro per 12 hours and water at 50 cents per 30 litres. Roncà has six on the same basis. Selva di Progno, up in the Lessinia, has six and is free with water and a pozzetto. San Martino Buon Albergo on the edge of Verona lists water and a drain and publishes no price at all.

These sit among the Soave and Valpolicella vineyards, and they are close enough to Verona that the city is a train or bus day rather than a driving problem. Verona’s ZTL is not one to meet in a long vehicle.

The Dolomites

Feltre, at the southern gate of the Dolomiti Bellunesi, has 15 pitches at Pra’ del Vescovo, open all year, with water, electricity and a drain, at 4 euros per 12 hours. Lamon has five, free, 48 hours, with an explicit warning that the water goes off in winter against the frost. Pedavena at Facen has five and is free. Segusino has 25 pitches and a 72 hour limit.

The national park corroborates several of these: the Ente Parco Nazionale Dolomiti Bellunesi documents stopovers at Feltre, Belluno, Pedavena, San Gregorio nelle Alpi, Sospirolo and Sedico.

Mountain arithmetic applies. Passes close, service water is drained before the freeze, and a site that is a good base in July is a cold car park in January.

What the apps get wrong

Two clean examples from this region alone. OpenStreetMap has Feltre tagged free; the comune’s tourism department publishes a tariff. It has Verona’s Porta Palio at 10 euros; the comune publishes 15.

Every place on this page names the body that published its details and the date we read them. Where two official sources disagree, and at Illasi they do over both the stay limit and the street name, the page says so rather than quietly picking one.

Rules

Article 185 of the Codice della Strada is national: a motorhome resting on the ground only through its wheels, no wider than the vehicle itself, is parked and not camped. Levelling legs take you outside it. The article does not grant permission to park anywhere, which stays with the comune, and on this coast the comuni use that power hard in season. The Italy country page carries the text.

Related

• Italy country page
• The Italy map