Residents themselves protest against a 5 euro entrance ticket for tourists to visit Venice

Tourists now have to buy an entrance ticket to visit Venice. The Italian city, one of the most visited places in the world, is testing this out in the hope of limiting mass tourism. But what do the Venetians themselves think of it? Several residents protested against the measure today.

From today, all day trippers visiting the historic center of Venice will have to pay 5 euros between 8:30 am and 4 pm. This measure will be tested for 29 days this year: every day until May 5 and then on weekend days until mid-July. At the end of this year, the doge city will decide whether to introduce this permanently. Residents, commuters, students and children under 14 do not have to pay.

If it depends on the residents, it will be removed as quickly as possible. They accuse the authorities of turning the city into an “amusement park”. According to them, the measure will defeat its purpose. That goal is to protect the UNESCO World Heritage site from excessive tourism by deterring day trippers and thus making the city “livable” again, according to Mayor Luigi Brugnaro.

“I can tell you that almost the entire city is against it,” says Matteo Secchi, who heads Venessia.com, a residents’ action group. “You cannot impose an entrance fee on a city. The only thing they achieve with this is turning the city into an amusement park. This is a bad image for Venice… I mean, is that a joke?”

Since the early 1950s, more than 120,000 people have fled Venice for various reasons, but mainly due to mass tourism. At peak times, the population is pushed away by the thousands of visitors in the narrow streets and bridges of Venice.

A steward checks whether the tourists have paid. © ANP / EPA

According to the municipality of Venice, 5,500 people had booked a ticket for April 25, a national holiday in Italy, which immediately generated 27,500 euros for the city coffers on the first day. Mayor Brugnaro denies that it is a money-making initiative, but promised to reduce local taxes for residents if the measure is successful.

For residents’ associations, the entrance fee of 5 euros will not deter visitors. “But day trippers are not the problem: things like the shortage of affordable housing are the problem,” says Federica Toninello of housing association ASC. “We need policies to help residents, for example by drawing up rules to restrict things like Airbnb.”

Today, “symbolic passports” were handed out to tourists in protest to highlight the “dubious constitutional legitimacy” of the measure when it comes to restricting free movement. Other demonstrators took to the streets carrying banners with slogans such as ‘no on the entrance ticket, yes on housing and services for all’.