Venice becomes world's first city to charge entry fee

Venice has introduced a daily entry ticket for day-trippers entering the Italian lagoon city.

Tourists will have to pay five euros ($5.36) unless they are already booked into a hotel in the city.

It's the first city in the world to trial charging for entry in an effort to curb rampant over-tourism and conserve the island.

The law will be enforced using spot checks with fines of up to 300 euros ($321) for violators. The trial will last across 30 peak tourist days in 2024.

Although residents from the Veneto region, students, children under 14 and workers are exempt from the fee, they have to pre-book online when arriving in the city. 

Hundreds of residents protested next to the city's Piazzale Roma on Thursday. Some think that the fee risks turning the city into a theme park. "It does nothing to pay a 5 euros entrance fee when many people are exempt from paying it. Five euros - what kind of tax is this?" resident Donatella Orlaldi told CGTN.

Venice has suffered for years from overcrowding and receives around 110,000 visitors on an average peak day. As a result its population has gradually shrunk to around 50,000 residents today.

Local authorities insist the fee isn't to profit from people visiting the city and say it will generate less than it costs to run the system. They will use it to monitor how many people are arriving on busy days and hope that it will deter tourists from arriving at those times.

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The plans do not involve any cap on tourist numbers. Some local businesses are supportive of the measures but many would like to see a maximum daily number of visitors put in place.

"Venice was the capital of over tourism, a negative example for many years, so we need to fix a maximum number of people who can be present in the city at one time," said Claudio Vernier, president of the Association of Saint Mark's Square, a group representing businesses in the square's world famous piazza.

Venice has already banned cruise ships and large tourist groups amid efforts to change the culture around tourism. It narrowly avoided being blacklisted by UNESCO in 2023 because of perceived failures to protect its ecosystem and world-famous architecture and art.

Francesco Calzolaio is involved in sustainable tourism in the lagoon and said the matter is not simply about being for or against the entry ticket.

"We have to change the tourism and change the perception that the tourists are having of the city," he added. "We have to put the ticket in some places and not in others… To reorient the tourism to less used and abused parts of the city."

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