Early Venetians battled the waves of seawater around them by building sea walls of stone and adapting their lagoon to fit their needs.
Now Venetians are battling waves of what officials call “eat and flee” tourists, who throng to the city’s landmarks with packed lunches, dump their garbage and leave without spending much money in Venice.
Day trippers will have to start paying an entrance fee to visit the city starting Friday, a controversial levy meant to dissuade people from coming during peak periods.
This year, city officials have nearly doubled the number of days in which the fee will be enforced, up to 54 days. (It was enforced for 30 days in 2024.) And a new wrinkle will punish the unorganized: Visitors who wait until the last minute to get their entry permits will pay 10 euros instead of five.
The entrance fee was introduced last year with the aim of reducing what city officials call “mordi e fuggi” tourism, or “eat and flee,” referring to visitors who crowd places like the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square for brief visits that do not benefit the local economy much, if at all.
The fee has been a good tool to “explain to the world that Venice is unique and fragile and that tourism to Venice must be more respectful,” Simone Venturini, Venice’s municipal councilor in charge of tourism, said in an interview.
Overtourism has for years threatened Venice’s fragile ecosystem and historic architecture, according to experts. The city recently banned cruise ships from its lagoon and has taken other measures to counteract the crowding.
But it has also fallen under the scrutiny of the United Nations’ culture agency, UNESCO, whose experts fear that not enough is being done to protect the fragile city.
In 2023, Venice risked being added to UNESCO’s list of Endangered World Heritage Sites after experts at the agency listed mass tourism, along with climate change and development, as a major threat to its future. It urged the city’s leaders to take steps to ameliorate the damage. The city has cited the access fee as one positive measure, and so far Venice has managed to stay off the “in danger” list.
A UNESCO expert mission returned to Venice last fall, and the city and its lagoon will be discussed again by the World Heritage Committee at a meeting in Paris in July, U.N. officials said Friday.
For visitors who book ahead, the access fee remains 5 euros. But it will cost twice that for trips booked within three days of arrival.
Last year, the city collected around 2.8 million euros, about $3.2 million, from the fee, Mr. Venturini said. Most of the funds went to cover the costs of implementing the system, which he said was still in an experimental phase.
Critics say that if the fee’s goal was to stop people from coming, it hasn’t worked.
An analysis of the data from last year’s trial, published by the Venice city government, found “no significant fluctuations between the days on which the access fee was provided and those on which it was not. Paradoxically, higher attendance was recorded on days when the trial was active.”
“This shows what was obvious from the beginning: You cannot govern a complex city like Venice by turning the city into a theme park with an entrance fee,” said Monica Sambo, an opposition member of Venice City Council. A more structured approach to regulating tourism was necessary, she said, with rules like capping the number of day trippers allowed into the city and regulating lodging for tourists.
She added that the city should have other priorities, like policies to promote affordable housing and employment opportunities that would “counteract the tourist monoculture” that has grown to dominate the city’s economy in recent decades.
The fee is applied to single-day travelers in Venice between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., and it will be enforced through late July. The city has established a website for visitors to register and learn more.
While just about everyone visiting the city has to register and obtain a QR code, not all visitors have to pay the fee. Overnight guests at registered accommodations, like hotels or vacation rentals, are exempt because they already pay a daily tourist tax. There are other exemptions as well, including people who study or work in Venice and those visiting relatives.
To track the flow of visitors, the city already monitors them via phone location data and security cameras, a system some critics have likened to invasive mass surveillance. The city has also imposed a limit of 25 people per tour group and banned the use of megaphones.
Mr. Venturini said the access fee also helps the city monitor tourist activity, so that it can better prepare city services for its consequences — everything from transportation to garbage collection. “It’s a very important instrument that no other city has,” he said.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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