Il Gazzettino Paywall: How to Read Il Gazzettino Articles for Free
Il Gazzettino, the Venice daily of the north-east, puts its local reporting behind a Piano paywall. How the paywall works and how to read a full article.
Paywall behaviour last tested
Il Gazzettino is the daily newspaper of Venice and of the whole Italian north-east. Founded in March 1887, it is headquartered in Venice with its newsroom across the lagoon in Mestre, and it publishes local editions for Venezia, Padova, Rovigo, Treviso, Belluno, Pordenone and Udine, which makes it the biggest daily in the Triveneto. Since 2006 it has been controlled by Caltagirone Editore, the Rome group that also owns Il Messaggero, Il Mattino, Corriere Adriatico and Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia. Its strength is local news, from the Venice city council and the Veneto regional government to court cases, volleyball and the restaurants of Mestre, and most of that reporting now sits behind a subscription prompt. This guide explains how the paywall works and how to read a full article.
How the Il Gazzettino paywall works
Il Gazzettino runs a freemium paywall built on Piano, the same vendor used across the Caltagirone titles. Agency copy and breaking news are generally open. The paper's own local reporting, its primo piano pieces and its features are reserved for subscribers, and the app advertises a free first month to new digital subscribers to bring readers in.
The gate is enforced in the browser. Each article page declares isAccessibleForFree as false in its schema.org data, which is the publisher telling search engines that the text is in the page but restricted. The full article is delivered so that Google can index it, and the Piano script then checks whether you are a subscriber and swaps the body for the subscription box. A reader that fetches the page without running that script receives the complete article. Our explainer on metered versus hard paywalls sets out why that distinction matters, and Il Gazzettino sits firmly on the softer side of it.
Our tests on 24 October 2026 through Skip the Paywall:
- A 598-word Il Gazzettino Treviso story on Valentino Vespucci, a 76-year-old Prosecco Doc Imoco Conegliano fan who travels eleven hours and 1,800 kilometres by coach from Putignano to watch the Pantere, loaded in full, all 23 paragraphs.
- An 825-word Il Gazzettino Venice report on the student chat that organised a large demonstration at St Mark's for 30 October, which the Digos is now investigating, loaded in full, all 6 paragraphs.
- A 622-word Il Gazzettino primo piano piece on the Veneto end-of-life law, in which the regional councillor Ostanel calls the government's challenge against the rights of the sick cowardly, loaded in full, all 6 paragraphs.
Read an Il Gazzettino article in full
- Copy the article link. Il Gazzettino links look like ilgazzettino.it/nordest/venezia/ or ilgazzettino.it/nordest/primopiano/ followed by a slug, a numeric id and .html.
- Paste it into the box on the home page and press Read Article.
- The story appears in a clean reader view with the headline, byline and full text.
The reader shows the article in Italian, exactly as Il Gazzettino published it. If you want it in English, your browser's built-in translation works on the reader page in the normal way.
Other approaches
- Newsletters. Il Gazzettino sends free email newsletters that summarise the day's main stories and link to them.
- Rai. The public broadcaster's regional news for the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia is published free online and covers the biggest stories of the north-east.
- Agency copy. ANSA publishes its Veneto and Friuli regional wires free, and many Il Gazzettino news items are built on them.
- Related free sources. The Veneto regional council, the Venice city council and the courts publish their decisions and records free, and much of Il Gazzettino's political reporting can be checked against them.
How it compares with other Italian papers
Il Gazzettino passed cleanly. Its Caltagirone sister titles are a different matter: our 22 October 2026 tests of Il Messaggero were mixed, with two articles in full and one preview, so the sister papers are not listed. Among the national papers, Il Foglio works, while la Repubblica does not: it returned only a 61-word flagged preview in our 24 October 2026 test. The full list of sites that work is kept current, and our guide to sites that cannot be bypassed explains what to do about the rest.
Subscribe if you read it regularly
Il Gazzettino keeps reporters in seven local newsrooms across the Veneto and Friuli, covering councils, courts and communities that no national paper follows. If you read it every day, a digital subscription, which currently starts with a free first month, is the right way to keep that reporting going.
Try it with an article
Paste the URL of an article from Il Gazzettino and read it in a clean reader view. Free, instant, no signup.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Il Gazzettino?
Caltagirone Editore, the Rome publishing group that has controlled it since 2006 and also owns Il Messaggero, Il Mattino, Corriere Adriatico and Nuovo Quotidiano di Puglia. Il Gazzettino was founded in Venice in March 1887.
Does the reader work on Il Gazzettino subscriber articles?
Yes. All three articles in our 24 October 2026 tests, including an 825-word Venice report on the student demonstration chat, loaded in full. The article pages carry the text and hide it with a Piano script, which the reader does not run.
Does it work on Il Messaggero and la Repubblica too?
Not reliably. Il Messaggero gave mixed results on 22 October 2026, two articles in full and one preview, so it is not listed. La Repubblica returned only a 61-word flagged preview on 24 October 2026 and does not work. Il Foglio does.