For day visitors, Venice is charging five euros to enter in an effort to relieve the strain of heavy tourism

To lessen the impact of mass tourism, Venice introduced a new plan on Thursday that charges day visitors to enter the ancient Italian city. However, many locals are against the plan. A five-euro ($5.3) ticket must be purchased in order to access the UNESCO World Heritage Site for the day. Inspectors conduct spot checks at important entrance points.

Venice is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world and is regarded as one of the world’s most beautiful cities, but the crowds are getting to the city.

Simone Venturini, the municipal councillor in charge of tourism, said that by the time the program started at 8:30 am (0630 GMT) on Thursday, almost 10,000 tickets had already been sold.

The “Venice Access Fee” is being implemented under a trial system for 29 busiest days in 2024, mostly weekends from May to July. In Italy, Thursday is a national holiday.

The number of tickets that are accessible is unlimited. Rather, the intention is to encourage day-trippers to come back at slower times.

Sylvain Pelerin, a French visitor who has been to Venice for more than 50 years, said, “I think it’s good, because it might slow down the numbers of tourists in Venice.”

Overnight guests and kids under the age of fourteen, among others, will not be charged the tourist tax.

However, not everyone is pleased, as some locals plan to demonstrate against a policy they believe restricts their basic right to free movement.

According to Marina Dodino of the local citizens group ARCI, “this is a city, not a museum, and you shouldn’t have to pay—it’s a protected ecological area.” This was said to AFP.

gentle controls
The new plan, according to Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, is “an experiment” that will be observed “without queues” and with “very soft controls”.

Though they may purchase tickets on arrival, visitors are urged to purchase them online in advance, as many did on Thursday.

At the primary entrance to the city, the Santa Lucia rail station, a new ticket office has been established on the plaza.

Those without tickets may face fines from inspectors that range from 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320).

However, none are anticipated on Thursday, a source told AFP, with the intention of influencing rather than punishing.

A UNESCO advisory
UNESCO designated Venice, which is dispersed among more than 100 tiny islands and islets in northeastern Italy, as a World Heritage site in 1987.

However, it is generally believed that the quantity of people traveling to witness what the UN cultural organization refers to as a “extraordinary architectural masterpiece” is unsustainable.

At its busiest, 100,000 overnight guests stay in Venice’s historic center, more than twice as many as the city’s 50,000 locals.

Every day, tens of thousands more people, mostly from cruise ships, swarm the city’s winding streets to take in the attractions, which include the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square.

Last year, UNESCO threatened to add Venice to its list of cultural assets under threat, citing increased tourism and the lagoon’s increasing water levels, both of which were linked to climate change.

Only until the new ticketing system was approved by the municipal authorities did Venice avoid the disgrace.

The concept has been discussed for a while but was constantly shelved due to worries that it would severely impair tourism and restrict freedom of movement.

Venturini told AFP on Wednesday, “The goal is to find a new balance between tourism and the city of its residents.”

“We must work to reduce the impact of daily tourism on certain days… (which) generates stress for the city,” , he said.

American visitor Ashish Thakkar, who was traveling to Venice with his spouse, wondered what impact the day pass would have.

“If I’m coming all the way from out of the country, five euros just to get access to the city — I wouldn’t mind paying it,” he said to AFP.

“I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference.”

Venturini thinks that by taking this action, local Italians would be discouraged from coming on crowded days like Thursday, which is Italy’s World War II Liberation Day.

The enormous cruise ships, from which hundreds of day-trippers depart every day, were already prohibited by Venice in 2021 and were diverted to a farther-off industrial port.