Venice gives the green light to the "tourist toll" amid protests: each visitor will pay five euros

The City Council of Venice (northeast Italy) approved this Tuesday the payment of “an access contribution”, a kind of tourist toll at the entrance to the city, which will be 5 euros for visitors in order to discourage daily tourism of masses starting next spring.

The approval of this rate has been involved in a controversy due to which the municipal plenary session has been interrupted on several occasions due to the agitated protest of some two hundred people gathered at the City Hall headquarters, the Ca' Farsetti, against the measure.

Venice, which receives nearly 30 million tourists a year, will thus become the first city in the world to establish this toll, which comes after UNESCO declared last July that it was going to propose the inclusion of the municipality on the list of heritage in danger, since the measures adopted by the Italian State to protect the city and its lagoon were “insufficient” and “must be expanded.”

“Venice is an open and free city, and as such it will always remain. We have decided to act and we are starting an experimentation, a pioneer in the world, to safeguard Venice after years of immobility,” justified its mayor, the conservative Luigi Brugnaro, on his social networks.

The tax, which will be implemented starting in the spring of 2024, will be imposed in the first phase of testing only on the 30 days with the highest tourist influx of the year, local media reported.

The vote had 24 votes in favor and 12 against during a tense session in which hundreds of protesters against the measure, which had been being debated since 2019, interrupted.

As indicated on the municipal website, “the resolution establishes the guidelines for the introduction of a new management system for tourist flows, with the definition of general principles, exclusions, exemptions, controls and sanctions, through a multi-channel platform and multilingual that will be available soon”.

“Discourage daily tourism”

The objective “is to discourage daily tourism at certain times, in line with the delicacy and uniqueness of the city,” highlights the City Council, which specifies that the access fee “must be paid by any natural person, over 14 years of age, who accesses the city”, except residents, workers and students.

Also exempt are tourists spending the night in the city, residents of the Veneto region, people in need of care, participants in sports competitions, law enforcement officers on duty and relatives of residents.

On July 31, UNESCO announced that it was going to propose the inclusion of Venice on the list of heritage in danger, since the measures adopted by the Italian State to protect the city and its lagoon were “insufficient” and “must be enlarged”.

The UNESCO Heritage Center considered mass tourism, renovation projects and climate change to be one of the main threats to the Italian city, as they damage the structures of buildings and urban areas, degrading its cultural and social identity.