Ravenna Cruise Port Rental Cars: Bologna Airport or Ravenna Town

Royal Caribbean calls it “Terminal Crociere – Porto Corsini”, Princess the “Porto Corsini Cruise Terminal” and NCL “Ravenna Terminal Passeggeri”. Royal Caribbean and Celebrity sell it as “Ravenna (Venice)”, NCL as “Venice (Ravenna)”, which is why some of you arrive holding a ticket that says Venice, not Ravenna.

Princess puts Porto Corsini “four kilometers from the city center”; our routing from Ravenna station is about 8.1 miles (13.1 km), and Italian Wikipedia says 13 km. Plan on the longer figure.

A new terminal, built by Ravenna Civitas Cruise Port (a joint venture of Cruise Terminals International and Royal Caribbean Group), was due for the 2026 season, with Norwegian Pearl named to open it on May 3. It slipped: on May 22, 2026 the operator’s director told a Ravenna paper a 2026 opening was improbable, and passengers check in at a temporary tent beside the site. We found nothing saying it has opened since, so check your line’s documents for the building.

No brand page we read mentions delivering a car to the Ravenna cruise terminal or collecting one there, so the car is yours to fetch, in town or at an airport, and yours to hand back the same way.

One warning for the sat-nav: the terminal is on the north bank. The after-cruise page explains the wrong-bank address and the €3 car ferry.

Enterprise on Via Achille Grandi is the closest rental counter to the ship that we could find — about 5.0 miles (8.0 km) by our routing, roughly 10 minutes.

Its hours are the problem. Enterprise lists Saturday and Sunday mornings, then weekday afternoons from 2 to 6 — and nothing on a weekday morning.

We read the page on two days and it said the same thing both times. The pattern is unusual enough that we’d phone first, not book around it blind.

We couldn’t read a Hertz or Avis office in Ravenna, Europcar’s Ravenna page showed no office details, and Sixt’s Italian directory lists no Ravenna branch (its nearest are Bologna and Rimini). Maggiore names a Via Adria agency with no hours — it sits on the cards, not in the checker.

Bologna Marconi is the other end of the scale: desks on the terminal’s ground floor and the cars on level 0 of the P3 Comfort car park, about 57.5 miles (92.6 km) from Porto Corsini.

Enterprise at Bologna Centrale, about 55.0 miles out, suits anyone arriving by train. Pick the desk by its hours, not its price.

We set the checker to 10 on a Tuesday morning. That’s a normal hour to collect a car the day before boarding.

Enterprise Ravenna shows shut, as its own page lists it. Everything at Bologna is open.

Move the clock to 3 PM and Ravenna comes back — a morning pickup in town means Saturday or Sunday, on the hours as listed.

Maggiore at the airport prints 8:00 to 23:59, and the checker treats that as midnight. Ask for the extra hours Maggiore offers on request if you land later — in writing, not on the phone.

On a Sunday, Enterprise Ravenna lists 8 to noon, Enterprise at Bologna Centrale 8 to 1, and the three airport desks we read their normal long day.

That flips the usual rule. In Ravenna the weekend is the easy time for a morning pickup, and a Monday morning is the hard one.

Bologna Centrale shortens to 8 to 1 at weekends, but it takes cars back after hours in a drop box at the station garage, open 7 AM to 11 PM, at no charge.

Enterprise Ravenna takes no after-hours returns at all — its page says so in as many words.

If your ship sails on a Monday, collect in Ravenna on the Sunday morning or go through Bologna. Don’t plan a Monday-morning pickup in town.

Royal Caribbean’s Ravenna page says plainly: “No long-term parking available at the Port”. An older third-party guide, updated February 2025, described free but unsecured parking in front of the old check-in tent; we go by the line’s wording.

The city end is Via Cura. From Oct 1, 2026 the city moved Via Cura into its tariff-3 zone: €1 an hour, €4 a day, €35 a month — so about US$4 a day.

The tourism board lists the Via Cura car park — automated, under video surveillance, cashless — as a pick-up for Visit Ravenna’s terminal transfer, with that run listed for May 1 to October 31, 2026. Neither page says whether you can leave a car there for a whole cruise at the day rate, so ask before you count on it.

Now price a rental that sits there for a week. At an assumed €33 a day, seven idle days plus seven days at Via Cura come to about €259 (about US$290), our arithmetic, before the transfer out to the ship.

That’s rent for a parked car, not a driven one. Hand the rental back before the cruise and book another for the days after — unless you’re touring on both sides.

If you’re driving your own car in from elsewhere in Europe, that’s a parking question, not a rental one. Our Ravenna parking guide covers it.

Dollar figures use the European Central Bank reference rate of Oct 2, 2026 (about $1.12 to the euro); your card’s rate will differ.

Maggiore wants a valid credit card in the renter’s name and blocks an amount it doesn’t state; Sixt refuses prepaid cards of any kind; Enterprise takes a debit or credit card in the renter’s name; ACI calls renting without a credit card “almost impossible”.

Bring a real credit card in the driver’s name. A debit card works at Enterprise and nowhere else on our list — a prepaid card, nowhere.

None of the pages we read states how many automatics a Ravenna or Bologna desk keeps, or what they cost. If you need one, filter for it at the search, not at the desk.

None of the pages states a deposit amount either. Ask for the hold figure in writing before you pay — so it doesn’t eat your card’s limit on boarding day.

Choose the counter you can reach while it’s open, then compare prices.

Discover Cars’ Bologna airport page, read Oct 3, 2026, said “from $14” a day (a Fiat Panda at $14.21) and averaged about $37 a day, with a bare $ sign. Its Bologna city page said from $4 a day, averaging $27; we saw no Ravenna page, only Rimini and Forlì.

Read those as headlines, not your rate — the currency on them is our guess. Our Discover Cars review covers deposits and its coverage add-on.