Iuav University of Venice
Iuav was founded in December 1926 by Giovanni Bordiga as the "Regia Scuola Superiore di Architettura" — Italy's second architecture school after Rome's — and became the first Italian university to build its teaching around design studios and laboratories, and the first to offer a doctorate in design disciplines. Visiting and teaching faculty across its history have included Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi, Vittorio Gregotti, and Tadao Ando.
- City
- Venice
- Type
- Public university
- Official site
- Visit website
- Admissions
- How to apply
About the university
It's a small, single-focus institution rather than a comprehensive university — architecture, urban planning, design, fashion, visual arts, and theatre, and nothing outside that range — with partnerships spanning around 200 European and 70-plus non-EU institutions. Tuition is scaled to family income, one of the more generous fee structures among Italy's public universities.
As with our shorter-form cities, our deepest, most detailed on-the-ground support currently stays in Turin and Milan — we don't yet have the same neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood rent data or a vetted-rooms network here, and we'd rather say so plainly than pad this page with figures we haven't checked.
Admission for international students generally runs through the standard route: Universitaly pre-enrolment, a Declaration of Value or CIMEA comparability statement for your prior qualification, and — depending on programme — an entrance test, portfolio, or language requirement, submitted through the university's own online application system.
See the Venice city guide for what living and studying in the city looks like beyond the university itself.
Living in Venice
Rent, transport, and settling in
How applying here works
- 1
Universitaly pre-enrolment
Your application to Italy, filed on the government portal.
- 2
Declaration of Value or CIMEA
Your prior qualification, made readable to an Italian university.
- 3
Entrance test or language check
Where the faculty asks for one — this is what preparation is for.
We walk you through each step inside the portal. How the application service works, or see the full 20-step journey.