On its busiest days, Venice swells with tourists who clog the city’s narrow streets, leave piles of trash and often frustrate locals. So the city crossed by the canal resisted.
Starting on April 25, and for another 29 days mostly spread over national holidays and weekends until mid-July, day trippers in the historic part of Venice will have to pay 5 euros, approx. $5.40, a proposal city officials hope will encourage people to come during less busy times.
All visitors to Venice must also register their presence in the city on the specified days, filling an online form which will help officials gauge how many visitors to expect and strategize about how to deal with them.
“It’s not about making money – the operating costs are higher than what we do,” Mayor Luigi Brugnaro told reporters Thursday as Venetian officials began a global advertising campaign. Instead, said Michele Zuin, the city’s official in charge of budgeting and economy, the goal is to “manage better the number of tourists and disincentivize mass tourism, which creates, let’s say, poverty of living in this city.”
Overnight visitors to Venice do not have to pay, as do those traveling there to work, visit relatives or study. Anyone born in the city is also exemptas well as minors under 14. And Mr. Brugnaro said there is no limit to the number of visitors allowed to enter.
Probably rising from the waters of the Venetian lagoon, the city is as beautiful as it gets, and in recent decades it has struggled to protect itself from a unique threat of climate change and rising seas, as well as mass tourism.
To counter that figurative and literal erosion, the city installed giant gates at the lagoon’s four mouths to keep seawater out and the pavements dry, and banned cruise ships from the inner canals. Those efforts helped keep Venice on UNESCO’s “World Heritage in Danger” list even after experts at the agency expressed concerns last year that Italy was not doing enough to protect the city.
From 1976 until this year, Italy allocated funds to help protect Venice, and on Thursday, Mr. Brugnaro criticized the country’s central government for not renewing that funding. He said he has asked the government for €1.5 billion for the next 10 years to help preserve a city with a unique heritage that needs constant maintenance.
“We need that financing,” he said.
Occasionally, days are so busy with tourists that the city has to limit some streets to one-way pedestrian traffic.
Simone Venturini, the city official in charge of tourism, said of the new measures, “We will be the first city in the world to know exactly how many tourists will come to Venice that day — whether exempt or paying , they have to register.”
After registering on the website, visitors will receive a QR code — valid from 8:30 am to 4 pm — that they will need to show when entering the city at points such as the train station, Piazzale Roma, the municipal parking lot, some beach locations and St. Mark’s Square. There will also be spot checks across the city.
For now, anyone arriving in Venice without a QR code will be allowed to buy it at the last minute, either with a smartphone or at kiosks set up near the access points, officials said.
Violators face fines of €50 to €300 plus a €10 fee, Mr. Zuin said.
The initiative was introduced on a trial basis so city officials could see if the system was working and how it could be improved, he said. In the future, the entrance fee could be calibrated – “a sliding scale of prices,” said Mayor Brugnaro – depending on the day.
“We are asking for cooperation,” Mr. Brugnaro said, adding that the data accumulated over 29 days would be made public. He said officials from other cities around the world have contacted his administration to learn more about the access system.
So far, more than 50,000 people have registered through the website – about one-third of them paying for a one-day visit, officials said.
“The whole world wants to come to Venice,” Mr. Venturini said in introducing the advertising campaign, which included a video message of the mayor speaking in different languages using AI-generated speech translation.
In the video, Mayor Brugnaro apologizes for any inconvenience the new system may create. But, he said, “the city has to be protected.”
