It is now a reality: you have to pay to visit Venice, the city is experimenting with a 5 euro entry ticket in the face of overtourism
A major novelty awaits tourists this Thursday when they disembark at Venice station: controllers will be responsible for checking that they are in possession of the obligatory entry ticket on busy days in the City of the Doges.
Published on 04/25/2024 at 07:18
With this world first, the city hopes to stem overtourism by forcing day tourists to pay five euros to stroll along its famous canals.
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“The goal is to find a balance between tourism and the city and its inhabitants (…) We must reduce the impact of daily tourism on certain days. On certain dates, it is too important and this creates stress on the city,” explained Tourism Deputy Simone Venturini in an interview with AFP.
On the square of the elegant Santa Lucia station, the main point of entry into the city, a ticket office has been set up from scratch to help tourists without this new key in the form of a QR code, also available online.
“An experiment”
Venice thus becomes the first tourist city in the world to impose an entrance fee like a theme park, while movements hostile to overtourism are multiplying, particularly in Spain, pushing the authorities to act to reconcile the good -be residents with a crucial economic sector.
It remains to be seen whether, despite its low price and the absence of a cap on the number of visitors, Venice will succeed in its bet.
Crossed a stone’s throw from the station, Ashish Thakkar, a tourist of Indian origin living in Florida, is skeptical: “If I come from abroad, I don’t mind paying 5 euros (…) I don’t think that It will make a big difference.”
For the tourism deputy, it is “above all a matter of discouraging local tourism for residents of the Veneto region who can visit Venice whenever they want”.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro himself admitted at the beginning of April that “this is an experiment”, which will undoubtedly be closely followed by other major tourist cities around the world.
Its town, one of the most visited in the world, has already banned giant cruise ships from its historic center, whose swarms of passengers will also have to show their credentials.
At peak attendance, 100,000 tourists sleep in Venice, in addition to tens of thousands of daily visitors. Compare to the approximately 50,000 inhabitants of the city center, which continues to depopulate.
At this stage, however, the experiment remains very limited in scope: for 2024, only 29 busy days are affected by this new tax, which therefore starts on Thursday, a public holiday in Italy, and is applied almost every weekend of May to July.
Many exemptions
This tax also only targets daily tourists entering the old town between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. local time. They will have to download their QR code on the dedicated site (https://cda.ve.it/fr/), available in English, Spanish, French and German, in addition to Italian.
A fine of 50 to 300 euros is planned to punish tourists who try to slip through the cracks, even if local authorities have said they want to favor persuasion over repression.
Tourists sleeping at least one night on site are not affected and will receive a free QR code of their accommodation. In addition, numerous exemptions are provided, particularly for those under 14 and students.
Venice, famous throughout the world for its monuments, its works of art, its bridges and its canals, has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1987.
In September, however, the city had narrowly escaped being listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in danger, whose experts had estimated that this jewel was threatened by too much tourism and global warming, due to “insufficient” measures. » taken by Italy to combat the deterioration of the site.
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