Entry to Venice with a ticket from today – “It’s becoming a theme park”, residents react – Newsbomb – News

Day-trippers will now have to pay a €5 ‘ticket’ to visit Venice as part of a scheme designed to protect ‘Galinotati’ from excessive tourism. Authorities in Venice have been accused of turning the city into a “theme park” as a much-coveted entrance fee for day-trippers comes into effect.

Venice is the first major city in the world to implement such a plan. The €5 charge, which comes into effect today (25/4), aims to protect the Unesco world heritage site from the effects of over-tourism by deterring over-travellers and, according to the mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, making the city “sustainable” again.

However, several committees and residents’ associations have planned protests, arguing that the fee will do nothing to solve the issue. “I can tell you that almost the whole city is against him,” claimed Matteo Secchi, who heads Venessia.com, a residents’ activist group. “You can’t impose a ticket of entry into a city. All they do is turn it into a theme park. This is a bad image for Venice… I mean, are we kidding?’

Once the heart of a powerful maritime republic, the main island of Venice has lost more than 120,000 inhabitants since the early 1950s, who moved away for a number of issues, but mainly for mass tourism and the thousands of visitors who crowd the squares, bridges and the narrow pedestrian streets during the busiest times of the year.

The entrance fee, which is only required to access the historic center of Venice, is available online and will be valid for 29 peak days, mostly weekends, from Thursday to July 14, as part of its trial phase. Residents, commuters, students and children under 14 are exempt, as are overnight tourists.

However, day-trippers will need to purchase their ticket online and will then be given a QR code. Those without a ticket will be able to purchase a ticket on arrival, with the help of local escorts, who will also carry out random checks at five main arrival points, including Santa Lucia train station. Those who do not have a ticket risk fines between 50 and 300 euros.

The Council of Venice announced that 5,500 people had booked a ticket for April 25, national holiday in Italy, bringing 27,500 euros to the coffers of the city on the first day. Although local authorities have denied it is a money-making initiative, they have promised to reduce local taxes for residents if the scheme is successful.

Federica Toninello, who heads the ASC, a housing association, said: “They think this measure will solve the problem, but they haven’t really understood the consequences of mass tourism in a city like Venice. “For a start, €5 will do nothing to deter people. But day trippers are not the point. Issues like the lack of affordable housing are… What we need are policies to help residents, for example, to put in place rules to limit things like Airbnb.”

The local branch of Arci, a cultural and social rights association, said that will distribute “token passports” to tourists on Thursday as a way to highlight the measure’s “dubious constitutional legitimacy” in restricting free movement. The fee, he added, would be “ineffective in curbing mass tourism” while creating “unequal treatment between different categories of visitors”.

Others, however, have adopted the plan. “It will serve to collect fundamental data and will help regulate tourist flowswhich at certain times of the year risk damaging a fragile city like Venice,” Tommaso Sichero, president of Venice’s shop owners association, told Avvenire newspaper.