Venice was the primary city on this planet to charge tourists a fee to ease the pressures of mass tourism and make town more livable for its residents.
The pilot program charges day-trippers traveling to Venice, certainly one of Italy's most picturesque and historic cities, a 5 euro ($5.40) fee. The latest fee went into effect on Thursday.
City employees were seen checking day-trippers' tickets outside the delicate lagoon city's Santa Lucia train station. Signs have been put as much as warn tourists in regards to the payment program.
The fee applies to tourists arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. local time. Outside these times, access is free. Day-trippers who fail to pay the fee face fines starting from 50 euros (about $53) to 300 euros (about $322).
Overnight guests staying inside the municipality of Venice are exempt from the fee, but will need to have a QR code to go through the gates at town's major access points. Reuters reported that a booth was arrange for visitors without access to a smartphone.
Clashes broke out between protesters and riot police on Thursday over the pilot program. Some tried to interrupt through a blockade by officers at Piazzale Roma to get into town.
Others held banners reading “No to the ticket, yes to houses and services for all” and “Venice will not be sold, it will be defended” as they protested the measure.
Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro on Thursday said that the primary goal of the prosecution, “that of cultural change, has, in my opinion, been achieved.”
“It is with courage and great humility that we introduce this system because we want to give Venice a future and leave this heritage of humanity to future generations,” Brugnaro said in a Google-translated post on the social media platform X.
On Tuesday, Brugnaro published in a separate post on X said that while Venice can be the primary major city to experiment with the payment program, “overtourism is not a problem unique to this city.”
“Through this measure we want to improve the quality of life in #Venezia, we want to make it safer, cleaner and with more services to guarantee safety for citizens and visitors,” said Brugnaro.
Venice has been toying with the concept of taxing day visitors for years as certainly one of several measures to curb overtourism. Locals have long blamed overtourism for driving up prices and turning town right into a form of souvenir-filled theme park.
Residents, particularly the estimated 50,000 who live in town's historic district, far outnumber the roughly 5.5 million who visited town in 2019, in response to Statista data. Many of those tourists disembark from cruise ships by the 1000’s to photograph Venice's famous canals and squares.
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