Day-trippers will have to pay €5 to visit Italian city under scheme designed to protect it from excess tourism
Authorities in Venice have been accused of transforming the famous lagoon city into a “theme park” as a long-mooted entrance fee for day trippers comes into force.
Venice is the first major city in the world to enact such a scheme. The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
But several residents’ committees and associations have planned protests for Thursday, arguing that the fee will do nothing to resolve the issue.
“I can tell you that almost the entire city is against it,” claimed Matteo Secchi, who leads Venessia.com, a residents’ activist group. “You can’t impose an entrance fee to a city; all they’re doing is transforming it into a theme park. This is a bad image for Venice … I mean, are we joking?”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The €5 (£4.30) charge, which comes into force today, is aimed at protecting the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “livable” again.
Once the heart of a powerful maritime republic, Venice’s main island has lost more than 120,000 residents since the early 1950s, driven away by a number of issues but predominantly a focus on mass tourism that has caused the population to be dwarfed by the thousands of visitors who crowd its squares, bridges and narrow walkways at the busiest times of the year.
The entrance fee, which is required only for access to Venice’s historic centre, is bookable online and will apply on 29 peak days, mostly weekends, from Thursday until 14 July as part of its trial phase.
Federica Toninello, who leads ASC, an association for housing, said: “They think this measure will solve the problem, but they haven’t really understood the consequences of mass tourism on a city like Venice.
The local branch of Arci, a cultural and social rights association, said it would distribute “symbolic passports” to tourists on Thursday as a way of highlighting the “dubious constitutional legitimacy” of the measure in terms of restricting free movement.
While some have raised questions over privacy due to people having to feed their data into the booking system, Venturini said the tool would be useful in “providing more precise figures on visitor numbers”.
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