For Venice, it is a sign of turning back time. The pandemic era has come to an end in a city whose residents both love and hate tourists, who spend $3 billion a year but leave behind 70,000 tons of trash, urine-strewn streets, and the occasional night-time ride in a commandeered gondola.
After suffering devastating floods, Venice erected an engineering marvel of metal barriers that could rise and fall in its entrances to protect palaces, piazzas and churches. Now, in response to residents' fears that Venice is becoming a glorified water park, this beach town that has drawn awestruck visitors since the Middle Ages is seeking to become a laboratory for how to deal with the modern malady: tourists flooding Instagrammable destinations from Savannah, Georgia, To Hallstatt, Austria.
“After 50 years of debate about what to do about mass tourism, we have finally done something about it,” said Simone Venturini, a city council member.
a The 29-day test, which is scheduled to begin on April 25 after a series of delays, will require day travelers to book and pay an entrance fee to set foot on Venice's main island. City officials point out that tourists around the world have long paid entrance fees for museums, archaeological sites, and even churches, with the most popular sites shifting to caps on the number of visitors or time periods. They say that this system is a light version of those systems.
Officials say that if deemed successful, the new fee — initially set at 5 euros, equivalent to $5.38 — will continue to apply on certain days, especially in high season, when tourists outnumber locals by 3 to 1. Paying tourism tax in hotels will be exempt.
Another pilot, starting in August, would limit the number of tour groups to 25 people. It comes after a cruise ship ban in place since 2021 that prevents huge ships from sailing past St Mark's Square via the Giudecca Canal and docking in the historic city center – although they can still make port nearby. It also banned the new rifle Souvenir shops on the city's main arteries, and new hotels now require a formal vote in the city council.
On a recent afternoon, videos coming into the police headquarters' surveillance center showed tourists wandering through the narrow alleys. A network of cameras and sensors help alert police about overcrowding. In three rooms filled with screens, officers can count the number of tourists in different areas and even assess where they might be coming from by analyzing the origins of their mobile phone accounts.
Police Chief Marco Agostini indicated that foot traffic near the famous Danieli Hotel reached 17,752 during the past 24 hours.
“If a block or street becomes too congested, we can redirect traffic or close it so we don’t have bottlenecks,” he explained.
The number of overnight visitors reached an all-time high of more than 3.5 million last year. The number of day visitors – who spend far less than a euro – is estimated at 10 million annually, although this may include people who visit the country more than once. Meanwhile, Venice's core year-round population has fallen to less than 50,000 people — less than the total number of beds in hotels and short-term rentals.
Although the pandemic's halt to global tourism has taken a toll on people's finances here, it has also offered Venetians a dreamy glimpse of a world where their city is theirs again. Last year, as visitor numbers rose, the city also received a wake-up call. UNESCO experts recommended adding Venice to the “List of World Heritage in Danger” – a potential PR nightmare for the city mayor’s office. Among the reasons: the city's inability to control mass tourism.
Eventually, a panel of experts from UNESCO gave the city a reprieve, in part to assess the impact of the new entry tax and other official efforts.
But that doesn't mean they're off the hook, Peter DeBrin said. Senior Project Officer at UNESCO, the United Nations body for arts, culture and science. “I think the committee wants to see how these efforts go.”
Conservationists describe the fees charged to day-trippers as too little, too late, noting that the €5 admission price is less than the cost of a cappuccino in Piazza San Marco. They call it political theatre, designed to give the impression of restricting the number of visitors, thus appeasing UNESCO, without offending Venice's powerful business lobbies that live and die on tourism.
They say the real effort will include steeper prices or caps, seeing Venice following in the footsteps of Florence and other cities in Europe and the United States that have sought to limit short-term rentals on platforms like Airbnb.
“We have to think about survival now,” said Jane da Mosto, a citizen activist who married into a family whose roots in Venice go back to the Middle Ages. “It's not as simple as money.”
Some conservationists point to crumbling, flooded stairs in ancient palaces to prove that mass tourism — mostly fleets of water taxis ferrying wealthy visitors — is causing structural damage to Venice, exacerbating the effects of erosion caused by tides and floods.
But most activists say a much bigger problem is the disintegration of Venice's social fabric and traditions.
Officials say they are trying to make major events like Carnival less oppressive for locals, reinventing it since the pandemic, for example, as a more “massive” celebration. More shows are now being held away from the main stage. To limit the crowds in St. Mark's Square, organizers also canceled the Angel's Flight. A scene with roots dating back to the 16th century in which an elaborately prepared performer launches from the bell tower.
The Venetian Carnival, a celebration of transgression and vice with the help of masks, dates back to the Middle Ages. Although it was intended to be a great equalizer between rich and poor, it became a magnet for royals and aristocrats across Europe, enticing the city early on with the power of its tourist currency. After a long period of dormancy, locals revived the tradition in the late 1970s and early 1980s, then watched it grow into the major commercial event – and international attraction – that it is today.
“My job is not to bring in tourists, but to manage them,” said Fabrizio Doria, director of operations for the city company that runs the carnival and other major events. “We want to respect the traditions of Venice.”
Some Venetians say they feel like they've lost “our carnival.”
“What have the tourists done? They have made the carnival soulless,” said Nicoletta Lucerna, 50, a fashion maker who is part of a group of Venetian families that host an annual “alternative carnival,” including rousing poetry readings and events celebrating the good Venetian Casanova. “Today Venice is just a business.”
In the 1950s, the city's historic core island had a population of 150,000 – a number that dwindled to a third of that size when greengrocers, butchers and fishmongers became trinkets and tourist bars.
Locals say tourist prices make the cost of living unsustainable. People who converted their properties into short-term tourist rentals increased the cost of long-term housing even further.
Today, a pharmacy on the island keeps a record of Venice's dwindling population on an LCD screen. Nicola Bergamo, 46, a writer and IT specialist at a high school in Venice, remembers that the number was 50,000 when he, his wife and their two children left the city last June. Now it's 49,139.
“I didn't want my kids to grow up in an amusement park,” he said.
On a side street in Venice, Bergamo cut through crowds of mask-wearing carnival goers as he headed to his new home, 40 minutes north of here. He remarked with disgust when he saw a foreign couple eating sandwiches on the church steps, under a sign prohibiting eating there.
