tourism
Pay Venice: “It’s not about collecting money”
On April 25th, short visitors will have to pay five euros for entry to Venice for the first time. photo
© Robert Messer/dpa
In a few weeks, day visitors to Venice will have to pay admission for the first time. The city defends the regulation – according to the mayor, the focus should not be on revenue.
A few weeks before the introduction of an entrance fee, the mayor of the northern Italian lagoon city defended the controversial measure. “It’s not about collecting money,” emphasized Luigi Brugnaro to journalists in Rome. The most important goal of the measure is to defend the city and make it livable again. The city should also become more attractive to tourists. “Venice belongs to the whole world,” said Brugnaro.
On April 25th, short visitors to the lagoon city will have to pay five euros for entry to Venice for the first time. The new regulation is intended for days when it traditionally gets particularly crowded. In total, the regulation initially applies on 29 days from 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.: from April 25th to May 5th inclusive and then, with one exception (June 1st/2nd), on all weekends until mid-July. It has been possible to pay the fee and download a QR code on a multilingual online platform since January.
Mass tourism has been causing problems for Venice – one of the most famous travel destinations in the world – for some time. The old town with the famous St. Mark’s Square, the Rialto Bridge and the many canals no longer even has 50,000 permanent residents. During the high season, on some days there are more than twice as many tourists. Brugnaro said the entrance fee was about preventing the city from exploding.
According to Brugnaro, the already set days on which day visitors have to pay an entrance fee are a period for experimentation. The city then wants to analyze the “true tourist numbers”. First of all, the regulation causes more costs for the city than revenue. Venice’s tourism assessor, Simone Venturini, also emphasized that the aim was not to seal off the city and that no upper limits would be introduced for the allocation of QR codes on the respective days.