Venice’s Overtourism Threatens Its World Heritage Status

August 1st, 2023 at 1:18 AM EDT

Italian tourism boards, airlines, hotels, and tour operators need to be vocal to save the lagoon city from potential climate risks before it's too late.

Amrita Ghosh

UNESCO experts have recommended that Venice and its lagoon be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger as Italy is not doing enough to protect the city from the impact of climate change and mass tourism.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre experts regularly review the state of the UN cultural agency’s 1,157 World Heritage sites, and at a meeting in Riyadh in September, a committee of 21 UNESCO member states will review more than 200 sites and decide which to add to the danger list.

For nearly 10 of these sites, the experts recommend that member states put them on the danger list, among which already are the historic center of Odessa, Ukraine, the town of Timbuktu in Mali, and several sites in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Other sites recommended to be put on the danger list this year are the cities of Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine.

“Resolution of long-standing but urgent issues is hindered by a lack of overall joint strategic vision for the long-term preservation of the property and low effectiveness of integrated coordinated management at all stakeholder levels,” UNESCO said.

UNESCO said corrective measures proposed by the Italian state are “currently insufficient and not detailed enough.” It added that Italy “has not been communicating in a sustained and substantive manner since its last Committee session in 2021, when UNESCO had already threatened to blacklist Venice .

The agency said it hoped that “such inscription will result in greater dedication and mobilization” of local and national stakeholders to address long-standing issues.

A spokesperson for the Venice municipality told Reuters the city “will carefully read the proposed decision published today by the Center for UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee and will discuss it with the government.”

Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has been struggling with mass tourism for years. On a single day during the 2019 Carnival, some 193,000 people squeezed into the historic center. Venice has been preparing to introduce a fee for day-trippers to control visitor numbers, but has been delayed by objections.

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq and Augustin Turpin in Paris, Federica Urso in Rome; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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This article was from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace . Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected] .

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Photo credit: Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has been struggling with mass tourism for years. Reuters

Watch CBS News

Famed Italian city suffering from too much of a good thing

December 9, 2016 / 1:21 PM EST / CBS News

VENICE, Italy -- There are more tourists than residents in Venice; as many as 90-thousand people visit the city every day .

As CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports, the “tourist problem” has gotten so bad in Venice that UNESCO -- the UN’s cultural body -- has threatened to put the city on a list of “world heritage sites in danger.”

It has given Italy two years to deal with the problem, but so far there are no solutions in sight.

The unique charm of Venice makes it a popular destination for many travellers. Its idyllic, narrow canals and quaint alleys draw more than 20 million tourists a year -- and there lies the problem.

Ecologist Jane Da Mosto says Venice’s famed lagoon is vulnerable.

“It’s too small, it’s too fragile… and we can’t look after the people that think they are coming to a theme park.”

As a resident of Venice, she worries that her city is becoming merely a backdrop for selfies.

While the number of visitors has grown rapidly, the local population is dwindling. In 1951 there were nearly 170,000 residents in the Italian city. Today there are fewer than 55,000.

2016-11-12t161234z-812700726-s1beumkzgcaa-rtrmadp-3-italy-venice-protest.jpg

Venetians have staged a demonstration against the forever-rising tourism. The protestors carried luggage as a symbol that they were on their way out.

“We have to find a way to protect the Venetian life,” Mateo Secchi, one of the organisers of the protest, told CBS News, “because a city without citizens is a city without a soul – it’s like Disneyland.”

Despite working in a hotel, Secchi says mass tourism is “a double-cut weapon because in the beginning you earn a lot of money and everybody is happy, but in the long distance it’s big trouble.”

The most obvious signs of the tourists’ outsized impact on the small city are the huge cruise ships that arrive daily and dwarf the lagoon.

Paolo Costa, the President of the Port Authority says the cruise ships are simply a scape goat.

“Everybody thinks that there is a big ship coming in from nowhere -- with a flood of tourists and they are flooding the city -- this is not absolutely true,” he says.

Cruises account for fewer than 10 percent of tourists that travel to Venice. Instead, the fault appears to lie with the three-quarters of tourists who spend just a day in the city. These “day-trippers” travel to the famous city but rarely contribute to the local economy.

Deputy Mayor of Tourism Paola Mar describes tourism as “the city’s most important resource,” but admits that something must be done to address the “25 years of mismanagement” that have led to this crisis.

ap-16317482292832-venice-tourists.jpg

They are currently evaluating more than 15 proposals to tackle the problem, including increasing taxes on tourists or gating-off and selling tickets to busy areas such as Piazza San Marco.

The size and geography of Venice make it vulnerable to the global crush of tourism.

The city will have to find innovative ways to tackle the problem if it is to avoid the label of “world heritage site in danger.”

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Venezia Autentica | Discover and Support the Authentic Venice

Why tourism in Venice is doing more harm than good and what we can do about it

The current state of tourism is hurting venice.

The ever-increasing offering of low-cost travel transportation, housing, and planning has helped the tourism industry to boom in the past decades.

The year 2019 alone counted over 1.5 billion international arrivals.

However, most major stakeholders of the tourism industry focus on profit, not on sustainability.

Today, tourism hotspots are affected by mass tourism – when visitors arrive in masses of tens of thousands of people – and the industry in the most popular destination has turned into a problem, rather than a resource. Venice is one of them, and it is suffering a lot.

Mass tourism is in many ways an issue rather than a ressource for Venice. Big ships can bring up to 2 million visitors every year. Many will only be day-trippers.

Venice residents dropped from 175.000 in 1951 to 50.000 in 2022. Why?

Data shows that the population in Venice has been constantly decreasing for several decades.

Several factors can explain why this is happening:

  • An increased cost of living
  • Higher cost of housing
  • A decrease in quality of life (traditional shops replaced by low-quality souvenir shops, constant, for example)
  • Lack of spaces for the youth
  • Lack of rewarding job opportunities

All of the above can be linked directly to the impact caused by the dramatic increase in mass tourism in Venice.

Indeed, some local entrepreneurs and several foreign investors exploit this situation to target tourists and generate great profits. Meanwhile, authentic activities and shops have and are being strangled by: ever-increasing rents, a constantly decreasing market size of the local population, and the competition of tourist traps seducing tourists with their cheap mass-produced products or frozen food.

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Venice is a beautiful and unique city that must and can only be preserved by locals, who are the only people with the knowledge (and love) necessary to do so.

This is why one of the biggest threats to the survival of Venice is the disappearance of its citizens.

Without citizens, Venice loses the mastery and the know-how that keeps and kept Venice alive for thousands of years.

Alas, however, younger generations are forced to move out of the historical centre because they can not find rewarding jobs and unaffordable housing, having to give up on their dream of living in their city.

Currenlty, the Venice I.V. (“indice di vecchiaia” or “age index”, which represents the ratio between people over 64 and children under 15) is well above 2,80.

In other words, there are almost 3 people over 64 for every child under 15.

This, coupled with a 35% decrease in the population aged 20 to 34 between 2001 and 2011 (just 10 years!), does not leave much hope for the city.

To give Venice a chance of survival, strong measures must be taken to repopulate the city.

Why tourism in Venice is doing more harm than good and what we can do about it - Venezia Autentica | Discover and Support the Authentic Venice - In Venice, tourism is not sustainable. Discover the impact of the travel industry on Venice and how sustainable tourism can help saving the city

The above trend represents the number of locals and the number of tourists in Venice since 1950.

One of the reasons behind the constant increase of tourism arrivals is the decrease of international transportation.

Since 2015, Venice counts up to 30 million stays every year. And that in a city of fewer than 8 km 2 (or 3 square miles)!

This increase, however, has also been coupled with a decrease in the average length of the stat of tourists and a shift of touristic behaviour that is harming deeply Venetian inhabitants and local businesses.

Mass tourism in Venice. Crowd of tourists going towards Saint Mark's square

These changes in tourism and the daily saturation of tourists within the city has led to an invasion of mass-produced souvenir shops and tourist traps, that are putting many local enterprises and artisans’ shops out of business by causing an increase in the cost of living and renting.

The consequences of this are a decrease in life quality and opportunities for the locals, as well as a worsened experience for responsible and caring visitors.

Related: You don’t want to be that tourist, watch out for these common tourist traps in Venice

Why are we speaking of a decrease in quality of life for the inhabitants as well as a decrease in quality of the stay for visitors?

Until the early 2000s, most visitors would come and stay in Venetian hotels for a few nights, taking a few days for exploring the city as a whole, visiting Venice beyond the landmarks, discovering the local life and culture.

In recent years, along with a yearly staggering increase in the number of the visitors, the way of visiting the city has changed: many tourists now come to Venice as a day/hour trip, as part of a cruise, for example, dramatically modifying social, logistic, economic and touristic aspects of the city.

Related: Good or bad? The truth about cruise ships in Venice

A vivid effect of this shift towards day-trips is that the only walkways used by dozens/hundred of thousands are the main streets connecting Piazzale Roma and the Train Station (the arrivals area) with the Rialto Bridge and Saint Mark’s square.

For 11 months a year, Venice assists to an almost daily gigantic human wave arriving in the city and trying to quickly move to and back from the two most known Venetian landmarks, resulting in a total jam.

Mass tourism is jamming the city completely, and diminishing the quality of the stay for responsible tourists, as well as the quality of life for people living in Venice.

To make things worse, Venice cannot provide picnic or resting areas because of its small size and its morphology,  resulting in visitors sitting down for resting and eating on bridges, narrow alleys, house doors and shop windows blocking even further the already jammed city.

Even though they are not perceived as such, alleys and bridges in Venice are the equivalent to streets and crossroads in other cities. Blocking them is a guarantee for Venetians to get angry at you.

Related: You asked, We answered: 19 things you might not know about Venice, Italy

Another effect of this approach to visiting the city is the impossibility for day-trippers themselves to take the time to appreciate the city and to understand what is genuine and worth their money, and what is absolutely not.

Foreign investors and investment funds have decided to take advantage of this situation by purchasing shops on the busiest paths to display their cheap/very cheap merchandise, luring in the passing tourists and selling mass-produced plastic goods which, at best, are of no value. At worst, they have been found to be toxic.

One more problem is that Italy has a high unemployment rate but no minimum wage, and these businesses, in particular, exploit the situation even further: employees struggle to live even in Mestre (which has much lower rents), while the company they work for is destroying local and family businesses and artisans’ shops.

Why tourism in Venice is doing more harm than good and what we can do about it - Venezia Autentica | Discover and Support the Authentic Venice - In Venice, tourism is not sustainable. Discover the impact of the travel industry on Venice and how sustainable tourism can help saving the city

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The investment race for selling 99cents souvenirs has led to a spike in the price of shops and rents that forced many genuine local activities, which were not aiming at masses, to try and move to less visited and therefore less expensive areas.

Because of the day-trip approach and the ever-decreasing local population, however, those less-visited areas struggle to have enough customers, leading an ever-increasing number of local activities to close and never to open again.

Related: Interactive Local Map Of Venice, Italy

This lack of opportunities and the negative outlook for young Venetians is leading more and more people to leave the city, well knowing that they will never be able to come back unless the current situation changes.

Are the negative effects of mass tourism in Venice really that bad?

The situation we just described could seem to be a bit too gloomy to you, maybe a result of a pessimistic approach.

The considerations we made, however, are perfectly in line with UNESCO’s last report about the current situation of “Venice and its Lagoon”, which lead the institution to consider putting Venice on the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger list in 2017.

Related: Venice to be or not to be a UNESCO World heritage site, that is the question

Is there any chance for Venice?

We are convinced there is still hope for Venice, of course!

Our strong determination and optimism make us believe it is possible to change this very negative trend and to improve the life of the Venetians, the health of the city, and the quality of the stay of the visitors… but we don’t trust the authorities for making this change happen.

We believe that Venice can prosper again, but only thanks to the people like you and us.

We believe that YOU can make a difference! Travel Responsively, please.

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It is estimated that 25 million tourists currently visit Venice each year – a figure expected to rise to 38 million by 2025.

Sinking city: how Venice is managing Europe's worst tourism crisis

Venice’s booming tourism industry is threatening the city’s very survival. But grassroots initiatives are making a difference – and may even help other cities

Friday 15 March was a rare day in Venice: on the concourse in front of the Santa Lucia train station, Venetians outnumbered tourists.

Young Venetians had skipped school to join the global youth climate strike, holding placards with statements such as “If climate was a bank, you’d save it.” The movement is especially relevant in Venice, since a 50cm rise in sea levels could see the city vanish beneath the waves.

Critical as the climate crisis is, the city faces a more immediate risk: the rising tide of tourists, presently estimated at 25 million a year and projected to reach 38 million by 2025.

Europe, already the world’s largest tourism market, received 713 million international visitors in 2018, an 8% increase on the previous year, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. But, in European cities, the increase is far greater: since 2008, overnight stays have jumped 57%. While tourism provides significant economic benefit – contributing €2bn annually in gross revenue to Venice alone – overtourism is causing cities like Barcelona, Amsterdam, Dubrovnik and others to make international headlines on issues ranging from housing affordability , environmental degradation and the destruction of local life.

Gondolas full of tourists in a “traffic jam”.

In 2016 in Dubrovnik, residents were outraged when the mayor asked them to stay home to avoid the dangerous levels of crowds disembarking from multiple cruise ships. The new mayor, Mato Frankovic, has since capped the number of cruise ships that can dock in the city at two per day, cut souvenir stalls by 80% and cut restaurant seating in public spaces by 30%. But similar issues of overcrowding in Palma de Mallorca, San Sebastián, Prague and Salzburg have brought locals out into the streets in increasingly impassioned protests.

One of the most dramatic was Venice’s 2016 No Grandi Navi (“No Big Ships”) protest, when locals took to the Giudecca Canal in small fishing boats to block the passage of six colossal cruise ships. And, although plans have been announced this year to reroute the largest ships to a new dock in Marghera (still to be built), campaigners still argue for a dock outside the lagoon at the Lido, where heavy cargo ships historically unloaded.

  • When Europe gets it right

As a series of crises puts Europe under strain, some cities are fighting back with innovative solutions. From hyper-specialist shops beating the online threat in Berlin to the Bulgarian city reversing the country's brain drain, from the Italian city finding new ways to tackle addiction to gambling to the Swedish town that has found innovative ways to combat extremism, we look at what European cities are doing to live better in our increasingly urban world.

This is just one of the ways the Venetian Republic safeguarded the equilibrium of the lagoon and the complex system of commerce around it. In fact, the act of sustaining the lagoon for over a millennium is a singular human achievement, because a lagoon by definition is a temporary natural phenomenon. Venice’s lagoon would have silted in 500 years ago if it hadn’t been for careful environmental protection, sensitive technical intervention and strict commercial regulation – a historic blueprint that provides useful lessons for tourism.

In 2016 Venetians took to the Giudecca Canal in small fishing boats to block the passage of six colossal cruise ships.

A new generation of concerned citizens and entrepreneurs is taking up that challenge, combining grassroots activism with socially sensitive, sustainable initiatives to save their island home. Consider waste. What comes into Venice must be removed again via a complex collection and recycling system. Every day an army of sanitation workers knocks on every door in the city, collecting waste to be ferried away on barges. The same rules and fines, however, do not apply to tourists – despite the fact that during high season the bins around Piazza San Marco have to be emptied every half an hour.

Troubled by the plastic waste generated by their two boutique hotels – the Novecento and Hotel Flora – the Romanelli family have taken action, eliminating plastic bottles from their properties, and encouraging guests to use steel flasks at Venice’s historic water fountains, for which they supply a map. “We don’t pretend to be [Leonardo] DiCaprio , but through these small actions we hope to do something positive,” says the owner, Gioele Romanelli.

With just 50 rooms and 40 members of staff, they calculate they save 36,000 plastic bottles a year. Multiply that by the estimated 40,000 guest beds in Venice – to say nothing of restaurants or the waste unloaded from cruise ships – and you could save hundreds of millions of plastic bottles a year. “Our children learn about these issues at school and all of them carry their own water flasks, so why not us?” concludes Romanelli’s wife, Heiby.

Gioele Romanelli, whose family-run hotels offer guests steel flasks and maps of the city’s water fountains.

Addressing the issue of waste is only the most tangible effort to create a more sustainable tourism in Venice.This June will see the launch of Fairbnb , a not-for-profit home-sharing site that only permits resident hosts; mandates one home per host; and contributes half of the 15% booking fee to social projects.

Their launch is timely. Since 2015, Airbnb tourist rentals in Venice have tripled from 2,441 to 8,320, according to Airdna . Of those, 80% are entire home rentals, many are owned by agencies or foreign investors and a 2018 report by Centro Studi di Federalberghi Nazionale found the most prolific host in the city had 135 listings.

Other European cities are responding to similar problems. Barcelona is prosecuting unlicensed apartments and has secured access to Airbnb’s host data in order to pursue offenders. In Madrid, home sharing is now only permitted in houses with their own entrances. Palma, meanwhile, has banned short-term tourist rentals completely in flats that are part of multi-family residential housing, although it is still possible to rent detached homes and villas, provided they are not in a protected area.

“Without significant regulation of the rental market [in Italy], we saw the only way to change things was to provide a market alternative,” says Emanuele dal Carlo, a Venetian who is one of five co-founders of Fairbnb, which crowdfunded for its startup cash. “We’re not anti-Airbnb – we just want to show that it’s possible to create a tourism model that works for local communities as well as travellers.”

On booking, Fairbnb renters decide which project to support and are invited to visit or participate: in Venice this could mean joining volunteers cleaning graffiti or helping turn a centuries-old squero (boat yard) into an educational centre.

“We want to bring back the connection between tourists and locals that has been lost,” dal Carlo says. “Nowadays you can go to a place and virtually never meet a local. But this way you can join them in their real pursuits or even just share a drink together.”

Piero Dri is a master remer, maker of oars and forcole (rowlocks). The craft of the remer dates back to the 1300s.

This loss of connection between locals and tourists is something that Valeria Duflot and Sebastian Fagarazzi are also concerned with. Their website Venezia Autentica directs tourists to Venice businesses that support a sustainable local economy – everything from printmakers to photographers, mosaicists to rowers. This is because too few of the city’s 25 million tourists frequent shops and restaurants owned by Venetians, they say. “Quality local businesses definitely need more customers, visitors included,” Duflot says.

Across Europe, other grassroots groups are also fighting to preserve local cultures. In 2017, the social movement Morar em Lisboa , in conjunction with 30 local associations, wrote an open letter denouncing Lisbon’s excessive dependency on tourism and real estate speculation. And last May, 14 cities and islands – 10 of them Spanish, alongside Venice, Lisbon and Malta – joined forces to form the Network of Southern European Cities against Touristification, arguing that mass tourism causes high rents, pollution, the loss of local shops and the proliferation of low-wage jobs.

This is what the European Parliament was referring to when, in 2015, it declared that “European tourism must make a transition from a model of quantitative growth to a qualitative model leading to steady and sustainable development.”

To kick-start new thinking on the matter, they awarded the inaugural 2019 European Capital of Smart Tourism to Helsinki for the city’s locally-oriented tourism strategy , which is based on sustainability and the assumption that what makes a city attractive to residents will appeal to travellers, too.

Mosaic master Romuald leads workshops in his Castello studio Artefact – an example of one of the traditional businesses highlighted by Venezia Autentica.

It is this focus on the liveability of a city that Venetian data scientist Fabio Carrera believes is the key to Venice’s future. Because if a city cannot retain its own populace, no amount of tourist tax will be able to avert its inevitable decline and death.

As such, Carrera has dedicated 30 years of his academic life working on the Venice Project Centre , dividing his time between Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the prestigious Santa Fe Institute and Venice. During that time, he has supervised over 250 projects examining the city’s challenges: mapping every bridge, bell tower, well and water bus.

The centre also tracks tourism flows, and has concluded that Venice’s maximum carrying capacity is 55,000 tourists per day, or 20 million per year if European safety standards are to be maintained. It’s not far from the current number of 25 million, he points out – it just needs to be managed better.

A new wave of digital tools could offer some solutions. At the centre’s startup incubator SerenDPT , students are working on projects including smart transport apps, hybrid mortgage schemes that use tourism income to assist with repayments, and a Smart Control Room for the city council that they hope they can export to other cities. He believes these new business ideas, among others, would create the kind of high quality jobs that could refloat the local economy.

No other city faces a bigger tourism challenge, says Carrera – but given Venice’s uniquely contained and complex character, nowhere is better equipped to meet the challenge of sustainable tourism. “Younger generations have been out in the world,” he says. “They see other possibilities and want to bring that back to Venice.”

This article was edited on 1 May 2019 to clarify that Palma has not completely banned short term tourist rentals, just those in apartments in multi-family residential housing

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Rising Sea Levels And Mass Tourism Are Sinking Venice, Threatening City's Future

Sylvia

Sylvia Poggioli

Venetians fear for the future of their city. Inundation by high tides and tourists is wrecking the island city's cultural heritage and may ultimately render Venice unlivable.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

In Venice, Italy, floodwaters devastated parts of the ancient city earlier this month. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, rising sea levels are not the only threat. As more Venetians leave, Venice risks becoming an empty shell, sinking under mass tourism.

(SOUNDBITE OF BELL)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).

SYLVIA POGGIOLI, BYLINE: When high tide recedes, St. Mark's Square fills up and resonates with a cacophony of languages.

(CROSSTALK)

POGGIOLI: Awestruck visitors shriek and marvel as they take selfies in what Napoleon described as Europe's drawing room. But elsewhere in the lagoon, Venetians take stock of the damage caused by a wave of exceptionally high tides known here as acqua alta, high water.

Pellestrina is home mostly to fishermen. For centuries, the 7 1/2-mile-long barrier island protected the lagoon from the sea. But on November 12, a near-record-high tide of more than 6 feet, combined with strong winds, washed over Pellestrina's high embankments, flooding the island for a full day. On ground floors, nearly everything was destroyed.

(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK ENGINE ROARING)

POGGIOLI: Among the waterfront, trash collectors load now-useless refrigerators and washing machines onto trucks.

Fisherman Dino Vianello stares forlornly at what was once his shed on wooden pilings. For 40 years, he stored his nets there. Now his livelihood is gone. Nobody, he says, had ever seen waves nearly 7 feet high and the sea inside homes.

DINO VIANELLO: (Speaking Italian).

POGGIOLI: "The lagoon's ecosystem is unique," says Vianello. "The ancient Venetians who built the Republic of Venice worked in harmony with nature, not against it."

(SOUNDBITE OF WATER RUSHING)

POGGIOLI: Many believe excavation of deep canals in the 1960s to accommodate oil tankers irreparably harmed the lagoon's delicate ecosystem.

There's also much skepticism about the large movable floodgates being built to hold back rising sea levels. The project is called MOSE, an Italian acronym that also means Moses, suggesting a parting of the waters. Still unfinished after 16 years and $5.5 billion in public funds, it's been plagued by corruption and won't be in operation for another two years.

Meanwhile, many Venetians feel ignored by local authorities.

(SOUNDBITE OF WOOD SANDING)

POGGIOLI: This is the workshop of a master artisan, one of only four remaining makers of oars and oar posts for the city's legendary gondolas. Paolo Brandolisio is trying to salvage his waterlogged oak worktable.

PAOLO BRANDOLISIO: (Through interpreter) We've always managed on our own. In the last 40 to 50 years, city authorities didn't safeguard artisans' workshops. So if there's no one left to make wooden boats, they'll disappear and be replaced by plastic ones.

POGGIOLI: Brandolisio laments that most shops now sell Chinese-made souvenirs.

BRANDOLISIO: (Through interpreter) Shops for residents are vanishing because Venetians are vanishing. So those who are left are those making money selling the cheapest possible goods.

POGGIOLI: There are actually two Venices - the city of giant cruise ships high as skyscrapers that disgorge, along with day-trippers, some 30 million visitors a year, while the local population numbers 50,000, down a third from a generation ago. And there's the Venice of international institutions that make it a world capital of art and culture.

SHAUL BASSI: International Venice takes the social fabric of Venice for granted. We need to change the vision of the city.

POGGIOLI: Shaul Bassi directs the Center for Humanities and Social Change at Ca' Foscari University. Across the world, he says big cities look more and more alike, with the same architects creating the same skyline. Venice, Bassi believes, represents the very idea of a city.

BASSI: It's a city that for over a thousand years has built a wonderful equilibrium between the human component, ecological component, art, nature. And in the last century, we have basically almost destroyed that balance.

POGGIOLI: Venice is at the front line in the battle against rising sea levels. That's why, says Bassi, it's the ideal laboratory to study climate change. Next year, his university will offer a new degree in environmental humanities. He says scientists provide the data.

BASSI: But we need to imagine what climate change is going to be like. And for that, you need the artists, you need the intellectual, you need the poets, you need the philosopher, you need the historians.

POGGIOLI: Bassi is urging people in all fields of science and art to come here to reflect, study, create and compose to help make this a truly living city for the whole world.

Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Venice.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

A tale of 2 cities: Venice residents torn between mass tourism and a more harmonious existence

Covid-19 made it clear 'la serenissima' needs to diversify its battered economy.

mass tourism threatens venice

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Francesco Penzo stands straddling a sandolo , a low boat Venetians once used for shooting ducks. He manoeuvres a long paddle deep into the water, steering the vessel around the corner of a canal in the former working-class neighbourhood of Cannaregio, the only sound the creaking of wood and birdsong echoing above.

Cannaregio is one of the few areas in Venice that had not been overtaken by tourists and souvenir shops before the devastating "acqua alta" flooding in November, followed by the coronavirus quarantine in March that locked down Italy for more than two months.

Yet as we glide past a row of gorgeously crumbling palazzi, Penzo points out a small brick building ahead that he says encapsulates the real crisis his city faces: not COVID-19 but what COVID-19 has made painfully clear.

"That's where I live," says the housing activist, who works in the insurance business for his day job. "Of the 10 apartments in there, four are Airbnbs, four are second homes and only two have people actually living in them."

Without tourists, in other words, there is hardly anyone left in Venice.

WATCH | The sights and sounds of a Venice canal:

mass tourism threatens venice

Italy's Venice could find a future in its past

It wasn't always this way.

In the 1970s, upwards of 150,000 people resided in the lagoon city. Today, it's home to just over 50,000, with the population shrinking by 1,000 each year — half from older people dying, half from people leaving due to soaring housing costs and lack of job opportunities.

A massive flood in 1966 triggered the initial exodus, with Venetians fleeing to the nearby mainland city of Mestre, part of the Venice municipality, and staying. Former residents began converting their Venice homes into short-term rentals and hotels; the advent of low-cost airlines and Airbnb did the rest.

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"When I grew up here, Venice was crowded, but crowded with Venetians," says Aline Cedron, an editor raising two teenagers in Cannaregio. Cedron is one of 3,000 members of Gruppo 25 Aprile, the latest incarnation of various citizens' groups that have been trying for several decades to return Venice from being what they call a 15th-century theme park to the vibrant, lived-in city it once was.

mass tourism threatens venice

'A different way of life'

Here in Cannaregio, for a moment, you can almost believe the city is alive and well. We stroll through a lush, walled park with children scrambling up slides, then past a square with elderly residents chatting amiably on benches as kids kick a ball against a wall.

It's hard not to feel a pang of envy to see how relaxed urban life can be — not only without tourists, but without the noise, exhaust and danger of cars. Neighbours congregate at the end of the day in local cafés for bright orange spritzes, the Venetian cocktail now popular around the world. Crime throughout the whole lagoon city is practically non-existent.

mass tourism threatens venice

"Venice is an example of such a different way of life for the entire world, and in my experience, a high quality of life. Having to walk everywhere, you are constantly meeting people, and the social aspect of this life is very, very precious," Cedron says.

Precious, but with a mono-economy of mass tourism that is perilously lacking in resilience, say even those who depend on that economy.

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Across Venice's once highly trafficked thoroughfare, the Canal Grande, master gondola maker Lorenzo Della Toffola bangs nails along the reddish bottom of a gleaming black boat resting on its side in his squero , one of the few traditional boatyards in Venice that remain. His son Alberto, in his late 20s and the only offspring apprentice in Venice's boatyards, works on another gondola inside a long shed.

Business has been slow, with gondolier owners waiting for customers to return before bringing their boats in for annual repairs. Despite his reduced income, though, Della Toffola says the post-quarantine period is a historic occasion for Venice to shift course.

mass tourism threatens venice

"Let's hope this time people get it," he says. "That we just can't go on with the old number of tourists. We need local artisans, who make the city healthier, realer and don't have anything to do with all the [tourist] junk ... sold on the streets. We need Venetians to return, bakers and butchers. You just can't have a city based only on tourism."

Groups seek diversified economy

Upwards of 25 million tourists, mostly day trippers, pour over Venice's walkways, bridges and campi  — small squares — each year. Despite efforts by activist groups to ban cruise ships, the mammoth vessels still loomed in the backdrop until the coronavirus lockdown.

"We want a tourism that is more aware," says Laura Scarpa, vice-president of Venezia da Vivere, a network that promotes Venetian artisans, artists and fashion designers. "We want people to visit with intentionality, to get to know our history and artisanal traditions and not just come to stand in Piazza San Marco and take a selfie."

mass tourism threatens venice

Scarpa's group and most others like it say diversification of the city's economy is the only way forward. Venezia da Vivere has launched a debate asking residents to "rewrite" the future of Venice, posting interviews with residents who have ideas for sustainable alternatives to tourism and incentives for residency.

Many would like to see environmental studies become a cornerstone of Venice's Ca' Foscari university, given how vulnerable the city is to rising ocean levels brought on by climate change. They want to improve wireless connectivity to encourage people who work remotely to live here.

They're pushing for tax and housing incentives for its craftspeople and artists, who, they say, not only represent a continuum with the city's past of textile, lace-making and glassworks, but who could lead the way in recreating vibrant and mixed urban spaces where people both work and live.

mass tourism threatens venice

It's a vision, they say, that all levels of government have failed to provide. They point out that Mayor Luigi Brugnaro and most city councillors reside in the mainland Mestre, not in Venice proper. As a result, they believe, the administration tends to view the lagoon city as a money-making operation, rather than an actual community.

It's a depiction Paola Mar, the energetic city councillor responsible for tourism who also lives in Mestre, refutes. She insists the municipal government does have ideas on how to move away from mass tourism — in place even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

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She cites a program encouraging "slow tourism," charging a fee to day trippers, brochures promoting decorum that urge tourists not to litter and loiter — an issue also championed by past mayors — and the installation earlier this year of sensors at the city's various entrances to count the numbers of visitors and better control the influx.

"It's beautiful but disturbing," Mar says of the now-empty Venice. "Tourism is the most important industry ... but we need to do more to help young people afford to live here."

mass tourism threatens venice

To that end, post-lockdown, Venice has struck a deal with the university for the vacant Airbnbs to be rented to students. It is also encouraging tourist shops to convert to corner stores, bakeries and fruit stands, now sorely missing, for residents. And it is moving forward with assigning 360 newly renovated subsidized municipal apartments to young families.

But critics call the initiatives a drop in the bucket and say that renting to students until tourists return mostly helps Airbnbs — many of which are owned by large companies with no real stake in the city.

Venice faces existential questions

What is striking, though, when listening to city authorities and citizens wanting change, is how similar their message is: in a nutshell, the need for Venice's tourism to move from "mass to class."

But others say even that is cause for caution.

In a recent blog post entitled "Which residents?" urban thinker Paola Somma questions both the emphasis on "quality" tourism and attracting a "new creative class" — the kind of people who attend the Venice Biennale, a showcase of cinema, art, architecture, theatre and dance. She suggests the phrases are merely code for attracting millionaires and celebrities at the expense of working people.

mass tourism threatens venice

Venice is not so much an empty tourist city as a "hedge city," Somma argues, its centuries-old structures not vacant but stuffed with investment dollars by the world's wealthy. 

As Venice's mayor tells residents protesting over tourism or cruise ships to "go live somewhere else," he publicly fetes people like actor Emma Thompson as new "Venetian citizens" after they purchase property here.

"When we talk about repopulating Venice, are we talking about a mix of activities and class of people that characterized the city 50 years ago, or are we talking about anyone who has money and is willing to register as a resident?" Somma asks.

How to save this exquisitely moribund city is hardly a new question. But with the COVID-19 pandemic — along with the chance to move through quiet canals, to hear Venetian accents ring purely through the air and to gaze, unobstructed, upon works by Renaissance masters Tintoretto or Titian — these nagging existential questions have been laid bare as never before.

mass tourism threatens venice

Many citizens say they will do all they can to seize this moment and to stop "La Serenissima" from returning to its "old normal."

But they also say the risk has never been greater, either.

"It's true this is an opportunity for Venice," says Francesco Penzo, steering the sandolo toward the open, uncluttered waters of the Canal Grande.

"But this crisis could be used to justify not just a return to mass tourism, but to even more mass tourism. Real transformation never comes with a shock but with a plan. And Venice doesn't have one."

mass tourism threatens venice

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

mass tourism threatens venice

Rome correspondent

Megan Williams has been covering all things Italian, from politics and the Vatican, to food and culture, to the plight of migrants in the Mediterranean, for more than two decades. Based in Rome, Megan has also told stories from other parts of Europe and the world and won many international prizes for her reporting, including a James Beard Award. Her radio documentaries can be heard on Ideas and The Current. Megan is also a regular guest host on CBC national radio shows.

Related Stories

mass tourism threatens venice

Venice’s identity is threatened by mass tourism and flooding. The city is fighting back, but is it too little, too late?

Long before this fall’s superfloods damaged artistic and architectural treasures, Venetians saw worrying signs of how too many visitors were harming their way of life. Now, both crises are at a tipping point

This article was published more than 4 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

mass tourism threatens venice

St. Mark’s Square in Venice's city centre is also its lowest point relative to sea level. The high water hasn't deterred these visitors, who are crossing on a catwalk. But in November, Venetians struggled with a monster flood the caused some of the worst acqua alta (high water) they've seen in years. Photography by Fabrizio Troccoli/The Globe and Mail/The Globe and Mail

Gianni Basso’s famous Venetian printing shop has suffered flood damage now and again, as have most stores in the sinking city, but nothing like the damage inflicted on the night of Nov. 12 and the days after. When he waded into his shop that night, he thought his business – his lifelong passion – was finished.

Mr. Basso was at his family home on the island of Burano, about nine kilometres northeast of Venice, when their mobile phones lit up that evening with an SMS flood warning. Such warnings are fairly common. Venetians are used to acqua alta – high water – and know how to defend themselves from it as climate change raises sea levels. Almost every shop has a short metal barrier that can be quickly slotted into the doorway when the water comes, and an electric pump to get rid of the water that seeps, or sloshes, in.

This was no ordinary warning; a monster flood was coming, one that would reach the second highest on record – 187 centimetres above the average normal tide. It would cover about 85 per cent of the city and cause enormous damage to world artistic treasures such as St. Mark’s Basilica.

He grabbed his rubber waders, jumped on the ferry and remembers the boat thrashing through heavy waves and pelting rain in the Venetian lagoon as the winds hit 100 kilometres an hour. When he reached his shop at about 10:30 p.m., it was filled with half a metre of polluted, smelly salt water. The electric motors on four of his printing machines were destroyed and hundreds of books, prints and letters were submerged. “I wanted to die when I saw my workshop,” he says when we meet about 10 days after the floods. “I thought my life’s work was gone.”

He was alone on his narrow, flooded street that night. “The water, the waves, the wind were crazy,” he says. “Mice and rats were everywhere, trying to climb walls to avoid drowning. It was a nightmare.”

mass tourism threatens venice

Gianni Basso is still cleaning up the flood damage to his small printing shop.

I have been to Venice two dozen times in the past three decades and have good friends there, such as Mr. Basso, 65, whose small shop near the Basilica of Saints Paul and John is a regular stop. Venice is doomed, its residents say. But not because of the ever-higher water – that’s just one problem. The other is mass, uncontrolled tourism, which they say is an equal risk to their beloved city.

I have always thought Venice should be the model for 21st-century urban planning. Imagine a city completely devoid of cars, trucks and motorcycles and all the hideous paraphernalia that goes with them – parking lots, overpasses, tunnels, drive-thrus, strip malls; where you walk everywhere without fear of being mowed down, don’t have to raise your voice to hold a conversation on the street, or breath in diesel fumes. Venetians are known to be healthy, with strong legs, because they walk everywhere. And when they can’t walk, they take the vaporetti – waterbuses – which are rather more pleasant than lurching wheeled buses.

There is no city like it on the planet, although some cities – St. Petersburg, Amsterdam, Bruges and Bangkok – made ample use of canals. Tourists adore these amphibious wonders. Venice, whose permanent population has fallen to 50,000 from a peak of 200,000, attracts 25 million to 30 million visitors a year. That’s more than the population of Australia.

Venice was built on more than 100 low-lying islands – mud flats, really – in the shallow Venetian lagoon. The concept was brilliant. With no hard connection to the mainland, it was protected from invading armies and their horses and siege machines. By the late 13th century, Venice was an imperial power, the richest city in Europe, with an empire that stretched from the Adriatic and Greece to Cyprus. The greatest financial and trading centre of its day, it had more than 3,000 ships during the medieval and Renaissance eras and traded throughout the Mediterranean and the Byzantine and Muslim worlds. Marco Polo, a Venetian merchant and explorer, travelled the Silk Road all the way to China.

Venice went into rapid decline after Napoleon took the city in 1797. But as working city, full of artisans, fishermen, boat makers – and, yes, tourists – it sputtered on for more than a century and a half and remained a global magnet for wealthy art lovers, writers and assorted Bohemians, among them Peggy Guggenheim. In 1966, the biggest flood in its history virtually drowned the city and thousands of Venetians fled.

mass tourism threatens venice

A waiter wades through St. Mark's Square in galoshes, serving patrons whose feet are protected with coloured plastic bags.

A couple of decades later, Venice essentially stopped being a functioning city and became a business. That’s the interpretation of many Venetians, including Dario Vianello, a retired boat driver who is now one of Venice’s most vocal anti-cruise-ship voices.

Mr. Vianello is 64 and wears a whistle around his neck, which he blows when he has trouble making his way through throngs of tourists who plug the narrow streets, especially around St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge. He says Venice really started to become unbearable for the locals in the 1980s, when the new breed of cruise ships, some bigger than navy aircraft carriers, arrived, each of them disgorging 3,000 or more hit-and-run tourists.

In the high season, as many as seven or eight enormous ships arrive each day. “Their passage churns up the lagoon sediment, and the displacement of the water damages the foundations of the buildings,” he told me. “The big tourist companies decided to turn Venice into a big business. The city’s government did not understand that this transformation from cultural tourism to mass tourism must have limits.”

Add in the ubiquitous Airbnb rooms and apartments – there were almost 9,000 listings at last count in Venice and the nearby islands – and the endless discount airline flights and you have a year-round mob scene, Mr. Vianello says.

The Venetian merchants have responded by selling out and leaving town, making room for junk shops. Gualtiero Dall’Osto, the owner of a Venetian mask store called Tragicomica, one of the few of its kind that still makes traditional masks in its own workshop, says the city is fighting a losing war against the new arrivals.

“Venice became globalized in a bad way,” he says. “They bought out all of the shops. The Chinese came with suitcases full of cash about 20 years ago to buy these little businesses. Of course, our government is making it worse by suffocating the few artisans who are left with taxes and bureaucracy.”

mass tourism threatens venice

Gualtiero Dall’Osto runs Tragicomica, a store that makes the masks Venetians traditionally wear at Carnival time. He says globalization and government bureaucracy have left small artisans like him ill-equipped to compete with foreign investors who bought the local shops.

mass tourism threatens venice

Upscale shops are ubiquitous in Venice, which draws 25 to 30 million visitors every year. But some Venetians say stores devoted to tourism have made Venice less liveable for locals who need places to buy groceries or do their laundry.

mass tourism threatens venice

The gondola is one of Venice's most instantly recognizable symbols around the world, but since the 1980s, small boats like these have had to contend with giant cruise ships bringing thousands of visitors every day.

mass tourism threatens venice

At night, catwalks weighed down with sandbags lie on a Venice street. Venetians worried about over-tourism are also concerned about how rising sea levels caused by climate change will leave the city more vulnerable to catastrophic floods.

Almost two weeks after the flood, Mr. Basso was still cleaning up.

When I saw him, he couldn’t do much work because only one of his machines was operating. The lower drawers on some of the wooden cabinets wouldn’t open because they were still swollen with water.

Mr. Basso is known as the “little Gutenberg” of Venice. He is a rare treasure, the last traditional printer of his kind in a city once as renowned for printers as it was for high Renaissance art.

Born in Venice, he was trained in letterpress printing by Armenian monks when he was teenager. In the early 1980s, he bought five iron printing machines, built before the Second World War, and set to work making cards, book plates and prints from ancient Venice engravings.

They are minor works of art and his shop developed into a pocket global business, whose far-flung clients include Hugh Grant, Marisa Tomei and Ben Affleck. You can’t buy his pieces on the internet. He has no website; you have to visit him in person to place your order.

mass tourism threatens venice

Prints in Mr. Basso's shop await their journey by mail to far-flung destinations.

Even he, a true Venetian, can’t take it any more. Until a few years ago, he and his family lived near his workshop. They pulled the plug on the city as their community of friends, shops and businesses disappeared.

The rapidly depopulating city is now stuffed with junk stores brimming with tat – fake Murano glass and Venetian carnival masks, T-shirts, jewellery – that are not made in Italy let alone Venice and displace stores that are useful to the everyday lives of Venetians. “I think we can save this city as a structure, but not its history. Most tourists don’t care about this city’s culture or its cuisine. It is the lowest form of mass tourism that is wrecking Venice,” Mr. Basso says.

mass tourism threatens venice

Retired professor Costanza Azzi, 82, saw flooding in the lower level of her Venice apartment building in November.

Costanza Azzi, 82, is a retired English literature professor at the University of Venice and the daughter of an Italian navy admiral in the Second World War. Venice has been her home since her high school years.

She lives right next to the Basilica dei Frari, the glorious Venetian Gothic church built in the 14th and 15th centuries, in a sturdy, two-storey apartment where she and her late husband raised their two sons. The lower level flooded in the November disaster, wrecking appliances, clothing and furniture, and the mess would take weeks to clean up.

“I’m tired,” she said. “We don’t know how to defend ourselves anymore from the floods.”

She agrees with Mr. Basso (who she knows by reputation) that Venice is losing its identity as mass tourism makes the city uninhabitable for Venetians. During a walk, she points out the junk shops or fast-food joints that used to be butcher and hardware shops, dry cleaners, bookstores and fruit or fish sellers – all gone. Apartments where her friends used to live are Airbnbs.

“The only work here is in tourism,” she says. “My two sons had to leave the city to find good jobs.”

The flooding and the mass tourism are eating away at the souls of the ever-fewer Venetians who remain devoted to a city that is built on a human scale, is filled with some of mankind’s greatest art treasures, is unique and astonishingly beautiful. “We’re depressed,” she says.

mass tourism threatens venice

A lineup of tourists navigates a catwalk above the water at St. Mark's Square.

Belatedly, Venice is starting to fight back against both the mass tourism and the floods. The efforts might be too little, too late to save the city from turning into “Venetian Las Vegas,” the term used by a local save-Venice activist I know, as it slips beneath the waves.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro has announced that a tourist tax has been approved by city council and would come into effect in the spring of 2020; it would charge visitors €3 ($4.35) a day in low season, rising to €10 during high-season weekends. He said the aim is to force day-trippers to pay for the upkeep of the lagoon city, which may be true, though the real goal seems aimed at reducing the flow of visitors. It may not work. It’s hard to imagine that a minor fee will keep tourists stuffed in their cruise ships.

The effort to stop, or at least control, the flooding is a much-more complex project that centres on one of Europe’s biggest, costliest and most troubled infrastructure projects – the infamous €5.5-billion MOSE project.

MOSE, an Italian acronym that plays on “Moses,” the biblical figure who parted the Red Sea, is a series of 78 steel gates that cover the four main lagoon entrances from the Adriatic Sea. When not in use, they are to be filled with seawater and sink to the bottom, where they are invisible. When a tide alert comes, they are to be filled with compressed air, forcing out the water, allowing them to rise on their hinges and block the incoming tidal surge.

At least in theory. So far, MOSE has been a long, sorry story of delays – the project was conceived in 1984, launched in 2003 – and is still not finished due to technological flaws, cost overruns, corrosion and epic corruption. A 2014 investigation into the project lead to 35 arrests, including the region’s then-governor, Giancarlo Galan.

Today, Venetians are divided about MOSE. Some think it will never work properly and should be replaced with another plan, perhaps inspired by the hydraulic-control marvels used by the Dutch. Others think it should be completed as quickly as possible since it’s largely in place. The November floods added urgency to the project, which is now supposed to reach full operation by 2022. No other flood-control plan exists.

Mr. Basso says he is going down fighting as mass tourism and flood waters rot away at the city’s heart and bricks. He’s a Venetian water boy, he says, and cannot bear seeing his printing business turned into a pizzeria or T-shirt shop. “I have a responsibility to keep this business open for the sake of Venice,” he says. “I was born here and I am the last printer.”

As he was telling me this, he asks me to look directly across his narrow little street at the old picture-framing shop. It was holding its final sale and was going out of business.

mass tourism threatens venice

Meet MOSE, Venice’s solution to a sea of troubles

After more than 15 years and at a projected cost of €5.5-billion, Venice’s MOSE flood defence system is still not operational. Construction began in 2003 on a cutting-edge network of 78, 20-metre-wide mobile flood gates positioned at the three lagoon inlets. When raised, the gates are designed to defend against tides of up to three metres.

Recent record flooding in the historic city has re-focused attention on the delays, cost overruns and endemic corruption in Italy’s major public works projects. The MOSE system is now planned to be completed by the end of 2021. This may be too little, too late as climate change makes the effects of high tides progressively worse.

mass tourism threatens venice

Lido North:

Lido South:

Adriatic Sea

How it works

Under normal conditions the

gates are filled with water

and lay flat beneath the

When the tide is forecast to

surpass 110 cm, the system

is activated.

Ballast water is pumped

out of the gates by com-

pressed air

Increased buoyancy allows

the gates to rotate on

42-tonne hinges and rise

above the surface forming

a contiguous barrier

compartments

Maintenance

Drawing is schematic

and not to scale

john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:

TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU;

mosevenezia.eu; technital.it; reuters; ansa

mass tourism threatens venice

surpass 110 cm, the

system is activated.

john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN;

OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU; mosevenezia.eu;

technital.it; reuters; ansa

mass tourism threatens venice

Under normal conditions

the gates are filled with

water and lay flat beneath

When the tide is forecast

to surpass 110 cm, the

out of the gates by

compressed air

Canale dei Cuori

john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP

CONTRIBUTORS; HIU; mosevenezia.eu; technital.it; reuters; ansa

mass tourism threatens venice

Cortellazzo

john sopinski/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: TILEZEN; OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS; HIU; mosevenezia.eu; technital.it; reuters; ansa

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International Edition

Venice could be added to danger list after 'insufficient' measures to tackle mass tourism and climate change

UNESCO said Italy "has not been communicating in a sustained and substantive manner [over] long-standing but urgent issues" in Venice.

mass tourism threatens venice

News reporter @Reemul_B

Tuesday 1 August 2023 11:41, UK

mass tourism threatens venice

Venice is under threat of being added to a danger list of heritage sites over the impact of mass tourism and climate change on the city.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has recommended the floating hotspot be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger over growing concerns of overcrowding and unsustainability.

The agency said steps proposed by the Italian state to tackle the issues are "currently insufficient and not detailed enough".

Venice avoided being blacklisted in 2021 as Italy banned cruise ships from entering its lagoon to defend its ecosystem.

Since then, UNESCO said Italy "has not been communicating in a sustained and substantive manner [over] long-standing but urgent issues" that were being "hindered by a lack of overall joint strategic vision" to preserve Venice in the long term.

Read more: Italian PM hits out at 'false propaganda' around her government France and Italy to fly citizens out of Niger

A Venice spokesperson said the city would "carefully read" UNESCO's proposed decision and would "discuss it with the government".

The capital of Veneto welcomes around 25 million people a year but excess tourism has led to the prospect of charging day-trippers fees of up to €10 (£8.59) to enter, depending on the time of year - a measure which has faced objections.

mass tourism threatens venice

Airport-like turnstiles are also being tested to control the flow of people and, if the number becomes too high, stop new visitors from entering.

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mass tourism threatens venice

Should Venice make it onto UNESCO's list, it will join 55 other sites where conservation has been deemed necessary including the historic centre of Odesa in Ukraine , the town of Timbuktu in Mali, and several sites in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

UNESCO regularly reviews the status of its 1,157 World Heritage sites, with further danger list considerations to be made at its September conference.

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Venice against overtourism: new measures from summer 2022

mass tourism threatens venice

Access to the city through turnstiles is back. These will be tested as early as this September and will be in operation from next summer: tourists will have to book and pay a fee to enter the city.

Venice and the overtourism issue

mass tourism threatens venice

Overtourism has been defined by the World Tourism Organization as "the impact of tourism on a destination, or parts thereof, that excessively influences perceived quality of life of citizens and/or quality of visitor experiences in a negative way". Venice has always been decreed as the world capital of mass tourism, with a ratio of 370 visitors per year for every resident in the historic centre: an unsustainable figure. As early as 2019, the administration had set out to put in place restrictive measures to improve the city's situation, trying to aim for more sustainable tourism. Because of Covid, the measures were postponed until now, as the city had remained semi-deserted during lockdown periods. 

Thanks to the stop of the large cruise ships, the city has averted, for the third time, its inclusion in UNESCO's black list of endangered world heritage sites , but to make tourism in Venice more sustainable, it is necessary, unfortunately, to implement further measures and restrictions. Venice is such a beautiful city but just as fragile, and with the advent of Covid the problem of crowds in the city's narrow streets and near the main sights is even more pronounced. When the new measures come into force next summer, it is hoped to put an end to this problem, thus distributing arrivals in the city fairly throughout the year. But let's look at these new rules in detail.

Venice and the new measures to regulate the arrivals

mass tourism threatens venice

During this summer of opening, after periods of lockdown, Venice was flooded with tourists, with estimates of as many as 80,000 visits a day. The problem of overtourism, combined with the impossibility of allowing crowds to gather in the city's narrow calli due to Covid, has made the strategy of limiting access to the city popular again. 

 From summer 2022, the local government has decided to implement "active" management of tourist flows, based on an access fee and electronic turnstiles. A strategy that has only been tested in the last few pre-covid seasons and whose entry into force has already been postponed twice. According to local newspaper reports, the system will involve gates located at the city's access points, delimited by high-tech turnstiles, to which you only need to place near your mobile phone to enter. In fact, the turnstiles will be accompanied by an app that will allow you to book your visit, paying the access fee, which will vary from 3 to 10 euros depending on the period chosen.

Residents, commuters and a number of other categories, that will be defined shortly, will be exempt from payment. The inhabitants of the Veneto region will not have to pay for access to the city, but will still have to book their visit. The first test turnstiles could be positioned at Tronchetto to be tested by the city's employees. The hypothesis is that they will eventually be positioned at the railway station, at Piazzale Roma and at the tourist launch terminal.

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mass tourism threatens venice

Venice Overtourism: How a Small City is Dealing With Mass Tourism

In the heart of the city, St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge have transformed from cultural landmarks to tourist traps, swarming with day trippers who contribute little to the local economy. The small city, once a serene escape, now grapples with the consequences of mass tourism—a term that’s become synonymous with visiting Venice.

But this isn’t just a story of overcrowded plazas and selfie sticks. It’s a narrative that delves into the very fabric of Venice, questioning how a city built on stilts can sustain the weight of its own popularity. From the visitor tax aimed at mitigating the flood of tourists to the more literal floods exacerbated by climate change, Venice is at a tipping point.

So, as we navigate through this intricate issue, we’ll explore the tension between tourism and sustainability, the impact on the local economy, and the ethical considerations of visiting a city that’s sinking under its own fame. Buckle up; it’s going to be a riveting journey.

  • What is Causing Venice's Overtourism?
  • Overtourism's Toll on Venice

How Venice is Countering Overcrowding

  • Venice's Dance with UNESCO and the Failure to Act

Venice Tourist Tax

  • Venice's Most Visited Landmarks

How To Visit Venice Responsibly

  • Frequently Asked Questions on Venice's Tourists

1. Why is Venice experiencing overtourism?

2. what are the main consequences of overtourism in venice, 3. what steps are being taken to combat overtourism, 4. how can i visit venice responsibly, 5. is it ethical to visit venice given the current overtourism issue, related posts.

Bridge of Sighs Crowds

What is Causing Venice’s Overtourism?

At its core, Venice overtourism is a tale of excess—a city drowning under the weight of its own popularity. Imagine, if you will, a staggering 20 million souls descending upon this small city each year.

On peak days, the visitor count swells to 120,000, starkly contrasting the mere 55,000 who call Venice home. The irony? Most of these pilgrims are drawn like moths to the flame of iconic landmarks like the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square , further compacting their presence into an already cramped space. The result is a cityscape that’s not just crowded but also crumbling, its infrastructure gasping for air.

But let’s not kid ourselves; this isn’t merely a Venetian tragedy. The same plot unfolds in Barcelona, Reykjavik, and Dubrovnik. The culprits? The unholy trinity of low-cost aviation, mammoth cruise ships, and the rise of home-sharing platforms.

Add to this the phenomenon of the “day tripper”—those who breeze through the city like a whirlwind, barely touching the ground. They’re the ultimate paradox: visitors who don’t really “visit Venice.” They snap a few photos, buy some kitschy souvenirs , and vanish, leaving nary a ripple in the local economy.

And what of those who do linger for a night or two? They’re part of the problem, too. With property prices soaring to stratospheric levels, what could be family homes or affordable rentals are morphing into cash cows for vacation stays. The result? A city where only the well-heeled can afford the luxury of residency.

So, as we peel back the layers of this complex issue, we find a web of contributing factors, each more intricate than the last. It’s a narrative that begs the question: How can Venice reclaim its soul while still extending an open arm to the world?

Venice Ship Ban

Overtourism’s Toll on Venice

Imagine being a local Venetian, waking up to the cacophony of rolling suitcases and the incessant clicks of selfie sticks. Your daily commute isn’t just a walk; it’s an obstacle course through throngs of tourists who think it’s cute to swim in canals or have a picnic on ancient bridges. You’re not just navigating streets; you’re navigating a minefield of disrespect. The city you once knew—the city you love—is now a playground for visitors who leave more than just footprints; they leave scars.

But the wounds run deeper than mere inconvenience. The very essence of Venice is being diluted, its artisan spirit eroded by the tidal wave of tourism. Walk into a bar, and the music caters not to the local ear but to the tourist’s playlist. The food, the merchandise, the very air you breathe—it’s all been commodified, repackaged for mass consumption. And what’s left for the locals? A city that’s increasingly inhospitable to its own.

The job market? Forget about it. Unless you’re in the tourism industry, good luck finding work. And so, we arrive at the inevitable outcome: depopulation. Venice, once a bustling city of over 120,000 souls, has dwindled to a mere 55,000. Projections are even grimmer; by 2030, some say, the city could be devoid of full-time residents. Jonathan Keates, chairman of Venice in Peril, warns that if the population dips below 40,000, we’re looking at a city that’s essentially a museum—a relic of its former self.

So, as we wade through the murky waters of Venice overtourism, we’re forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: the city is at risk of losing not just its character but its very lifeblood. And that, my friends, is a tragedy we cannot afford to ignore.

Venice Ship Ban Closeup

In a move that’s both applauded and criticized, the Italian government swung the hammer in 2017, banning cruise ships weighing over 55,000 tonnes from sailing into St. Mark’s Basin and the Giudecca Canal starting 2021.

The behemoths of the sea will now have to dock their hulking masses in Marghera, a mainland port. It’s a step, albeit a contentious one, toward reclaiming Venice’s fragile waterways. But it’s not just to reduce crowds, banning tourist ships has helped with Venice’s flooding issues .

Then there’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, a man walking a tightrope between preservation and public outcry. In 2018, he unveiled a divisive plan to control the human tide flooding Venice’s iconic landmarks.

Imagine this: turnstiles at the Rialto Bridge and St. Mark’s Square, diverting tourists like cattle while allowing only locals and business folks to traverse the city’s arterial routes. And if you dare to roll into Venice in your car without pre-booked parking? You might as well U-turn at the Ponta della Liberta. The mayor didn’t stop there; he slapped fines on everything from noisy wheelie suitcases to public picnics.

But not everyone’s singing the mayor’s tune. In a dramatic act of defiance, protesters tore down the newly erected turnstiles, their chants of “Free Venice” echoing through the city’s ancient corridors. Activist Marco Baravalle summed it up: “Venice is dying… The mayor’s turnstiles signify surrender—a Venice devoid of its lifeblood.”

So here we are, at the crossroads of preservation and freedom, each path fraught with its own set of challenges and ethical dilemmas.

Flooded Piazza San Marco

Venice’s Dance with UNESCO and the Failure to Act

Overtourism in Venice isn’t yesterday’s news; it’s a haunting refrain that’s been echoing for years. UNESCO, the global guardian of heritage, has been sounding the alarm bells since 2014. They gave Italy a two-year ultimatum to get its act together, demanding a sustainable tourism strategy and a coordinated approach to preserve Venice’s ‘outstanding universal value.’ Fast forward to 2017, and the city found itself teetering on the edge of UNESCO’s ‘sites in danger’ list—a fate deferred, but not dismissed, until 2018.

The inertia is maddening, to say the least. Just ask Justin Francis, CEO of Responsible Travel, who can barely contain his exasperation: “How did we get here? How did this jewel of a city end up on the brink?” For years, Venice has been unable to stem the tide of tourists pouring in from cruise ships and Airbnb rentals. The result? A city divided, its social fabric torn between residents and visitors. “Venice has been reduced to a theme park,” Francis laments. “Tourism should be a bridge, not a wall. It should unite locals and tourists in a symbiotic relationship, not segregate them.”

So, as the sands of time slip through our fingers, we’re left grappling with a Venice that’s at a critical juncture. The question isn’t just how to save the city, but how to restore its soul in a way that honors both its residents and its global admirers.

Piazza San Marco at Night

The Venice Tourist Tax is a fee that visitors must pay to enter the city. Initially planned to be implemented in January 2022, the tax has been postponed multiple times and is now expected to be in effect by at least 2024. The tax will range from 3 to 10 euros, depending on the tourist flow on a given day.

The tax aims to control the number of visitors and better manage the city’s resources. The tax will not apply to those staying in hotels within Venice, as they already pay a local city tax. Various exemptions are in place, including for residents, students, and those in Venice for official business. Fines for non-compliance will range from 100 to 450 euros.

Update 09.13.2023:

Venice’s city council has approved the daytime tax for visitors. Starting in 2024, day visitors will be required to pay 5 euros ($5.38) to visit the city.

This tax will be in effect for 30 non-consecutive days, primarily during long weekends in the spring and regular weekends in the summer. The exact dates will be announced soon.

The tax is aimed at protecting Venice from the detrimental effects of mass tourism. Overnight travelers are exempt from this tax but are subject to a separate tourist tax introduced in 2011. The overnight travelers tax ranges from 1 to 5 euros per person per night for the first five nights.

The mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, has stated that this tax is an experiment to manage overtourism without causing harm.

#ConsiglioComunale | Approvato il Regolamento per il contributo d’accesso per i turisti giornalieri! Faremo una sperimentazione con grande umiltà e cercheremo di non danneggiare nessuno. È una delle azioni che abbiamo messo in campo per proteggere la Città del turismo di… pic.twitter.com/LJ9iSqmT9d — Luigi Brugnaro (@LuigiBrugnaro) September 12, 2023

Doge's Palace Crowd

Venice’s Most Visited Landmarks

  • St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) : The grand living room of Venice, a must-see that’s often the first stop for any visitor.
  • St. Mark’s Basilica : An architectural marvel that is a testament to Venice’s opulence and Byzantine influences.
  • Doge’s Palace (Palazzo Ducale) : A symbol of the city’s former maritime might and political prowess.
  • Rialto Bridge : The oldest and most iconic bridge spanning the Grand Canal, a bustling hub of commerce and photography.
  • Grand Canal : Venice’s main waterway, best experienced by vaporetto or a romantic gondola ride.
  • Bridge of Sighs : A baroque beauty with a melancholic history, connecting the Doge’s Palace to the old prisons.
  • Santa Maria della Salute : A stunning baroque church that dominates the Venetian skyline.
  • Gallerie dell’Accademia : Home to an impressive collection of Venetian art from the Middle Ages to the 18th century.
  • Murano Island : Famous for its centuries-old tradition of glassmaking.
  • Burano Island : Known for its colorful houses and intricate lacework.
  • Lido : Venice’s beach, a break from the city’s labyrinthine canals and narrow streets.
  • Teatro La Fenice : One of the most famous opera houses in Italy, a phoenix risen from the ashes—literally.
  • Scuola Grande di San Rocco : A masterpiece of Tintoretto, showcasing some of his finest works.
  • Jewish Ghetto : The world’s first ghetto, a poignant reminder of Venice’s complex history.

Via Garibaldi in Castello, Venice, Italy

  • Off-Peak Visits : Consider visiting Venice during the shoulder seasons. Fewer crowds mean a more authentic experience and less strain on local resources.
  • Stay Local : Opt for locally-owned accommodations over large hotel chains or Airbnb rentals that drive up property prices for residents.
  • Spend Wisely : Invest in the local economy by dining at local restaurants, shopping at local markets, and hiring local guides.
  • Mindful Movement : Avoid cruise ships and consider arriving by train or eco-friendly modes of transport. Once there, walk or use public vaporettos rather than private water taxis.
  • Cultural Respect : Learn a few basic phrases in Italian, understand local customs, and respect public spaces. No picnicking on bridges or swimming in canals, please.
  • Low-Impact Exploration : Stick to the less-trodden paths. Visit lesser-known landmarks and neighborhoods to spread the tourist load.
  • Sustainable Souvenirs : Buy locally-made crafts and products rather than mass-produced trinkets. Murano glass or Burano lace, anyone?
  • Leave No Trace : Dispose of your waste properly. Venice has a fragile ecosystem that’s easily disrupted by litter.
  • Educate Yourself : Before you go, read up on Venice’s history, culture, and the challenges it faces. Knowledge is the first step toward empathy and responsible action.
  • Advocate and Share : Use your social media platforms to educate others about responsible travel. Your influence can make a difference.
  • Support Local Initiatives : Contribute to local organizations working to preserve Venice’s cultural and natural heritage.
  • Be Mindful of Photography : Respect people’s privacy and property when taking photos. Not everything needs to be Instagrammed.

For more information, read our guide to the best times to visit Venice .

Piazza San Marco at Night

Frequently Asked Questions on Venice’s Tourists

Venice is a victim of its own allure—a city so captivating that it draws millions each year. The rise of low-cost airlines, cruise ships, and home-sharing platforms like Airbnb have made it easier than ever to “visit Venice,” exacerbating the problem. The city’s small size and fragile ecosystem make it particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of mass tourism.

The repercussions are manifold, affecting both the physical city and its community. Landmarks like St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge are overcrowded, leading to wear and tear. The local economy is skewed towards tourism, making it hard for residents to find non-tourism jobs. This has led to depopulation, as locals move away in search of better opportunities.

Various measures have been implemented, such as banning large cruise ships from certain canals and introducing visitor taxes. The Mayor has also proposed controlling access to popular sites and fining inappropriate behavior. However, these steps have been met with mixed reactions, and the effectiveness remains to be seen.

Being a responsible traveler involves making conscious choices. Visit during off-peak seasons, stay in locally-owned accommodations, and spend your money at local businesses. Be respectful of the city’s cultural heritage and natural environment. Educate yourself about the issues Venice faces and consider how your actions can either contribute to the problem or be part of the solution.

This is a complex question with no easy answer. On one hand, tourism is a significant part of Venice’s economy. On the other, the city is clearly struggling under the weight of its own popularity. The key is to visit in a way that minimizes your negative impact and maximizes your positive contributions to the local community and environment.

As we navigate the labyrinthine canals and complexities of Venice overtourism, it’s clear that the city stands at a critical juncture. The choices we make today—as travelers, as policymakers, as global citizens—will echo through the annals of Venice’s history. But let’s not forget, Venice isn’t just a city; it’s a living, breathing entity that embodies the collective memory and dreams of humanity. It’s a place that deserves not just our admiration but also our utmost respect and care. So, as you ponder your next journey, consider how you can be a part of Venice’s preservation, not its downfall. The city’s future, in many ways, is in our hands. We invite you to join this crucial conversation. What are your thoughts on overtourism in Venice? How can we, as a global community, contribute to the city’s sustainability? Share your insights, experiences, and suggestions in the comments below. Let’s come together to write the next chapter in Venice’s storied history—a chapter that speaks of revival, respect, and responsible travel.

Raining and flooding in Pizza San Marco

Venice Flooding: Why Is Venice Sinking?

Venice faces rising sea tides that could destroy this ancient city. Learn about the causes of the flooding, what Venice is doing to stop it, and more.

Annecy, France

Venice Alternatives Around the World

As you plan your next trip abroad, consider these cities as Venice alternatives. Each location offers a unique take on Venetian romance and wonder. Read more.

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About Todd O'Rourke

Todd is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who co-founded Compass and Pine with his dog Leg. Together, they have traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe, with their base of operations in Philadelphia.

He started Compass and Pine after living in Vicenza, Italy for three years and falling deeply in love with the country, the people, and, of course, the food.

His favorite city is Florence, Italy, and his favorite National Park is Olympic in Washington.

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Venice is facing multiple tourism threats and many Venetians now want controls on visitors

They used to say "see Venice and die". The impossible city-on-the-sea has long been a bucket list staple for travellers lured by its water and its stone.

But now Venetians are questioning whether the city itself will survive long enough for coming generations to experience.

A man wearing an artisan mask poses.

Venice is facing multiple threats but, as Foreign Correspondent discovers, the sheer weight of visitors is the one that many locals find the most overwhelming.

Just near the famous Rialto Bridge spanning the Grand Canal, a clock tracks the local population decline.

It now registers just under 53,000 locals — less than half the number 60 years ago.

At this rate, Venice will be all but empty of Venetians in about 50 years.

Meanwhile, 25 to 30 million tourists will arrive this year.

The 'eat-and-run' visitors

It's a bitterly cold February morning in Venice but with each passing minute, getting around the city is becoming more difficult.

Preparations are underway for the annual pre-Lent Carnevale festival and the already-crowded laneways are filling with more and more tourists.

Gondolas navigate through a narrow passage in Venice.

Visitors from China are by far the most visible group wandering the city's tourist hotspots.

They're often pilloried by locals as the main perpetrators of what's called "eat-and-run" tourism.

The eat-and-run visitors come on tours with tightly choreographed schedules.

They congregate in high-traffic areas, eat in designated restaurants and tend to buy from stalls selling mass-produced souvenirs.

Many eat-and-run tourists find their way to St Mark's square, one of Venice's busiest attractions.

The arrival of the eat-and-run coaches is a sight in itself. They come in convoys, bus after bus, doors folding open and tour guides emerging, flag in hand, with dozens of clients in tow.

The visitors are clearly thrilled to be on Italian soil, if only for a fleeting moment.

A bus comes to a halt and disgorges another load of visitors, eager to make the most of their time in the city.

But this group hardly even qualify as day trippers — one tourist says they will squeeze in a gondola ride and spend just three hours in the city.

People crowd a Venice canal to watch a light show.

Such a hasty experience of Venice is hard to comprehend for the locals.

They urge visitors to take the time to get lost in the city's myriad alleyways and hidden squares, or take a stroll over the beautiful bridges that crisscross the canals.

Venetians also accuse eat-and-run visitors of spending very little in the local economy, while swelling the crowds and putting pressure on infrastructure.

Is it fair to blame Chinese tourists?

Last year alone there was a 20 per cent increase in Chinese tourists in the Venice area, according to Venice-based academic and marketing expert, Victoria Ying Liu.

But it's not just Chinese visitors who are swelling the city's numbers.

A woman stands holding an artisan face mask.

"We have more German people, people from the UK, people from France, Spain," Ms Ying Liu says.

"So actually they are much more than Chinese people because it's only 10 per cent of Chinese who can travel."

That's because only about 10 per cent of China's 1.4 billion citizens currently have a passport. That's set to change, with potentially major ramifications for not only Venice, but tourist numbers worldwide.

"The potential of the Chinese market, I think, is huge," Ms Ying Liu says.

Gondoliers row as tourists enjoy a ride along a canal.

She predicts eat-and-run visitors will decline and future Chinese visitors will stay longer and bring more money into the city.

"Chinese people, they like shopping — they love shopping — they spend a lot when they are travelling," she says.

"So I think it's a resource for the city."

Airbnb killing the city

If anything it's the conventional, longer-staying tourists who are having the most severe impact on residents.

Locals are being squeezed out of their homes as landlords and agencies like Airbnb convert residential apartments to lucrative tourism rentals.

There are nearly 8,000 Airbnbs in Venice's small city centre and no restrictions on the company's growth.

Long-term renters, often middle class, say they are being priced out of the market. Rents swallow up about half of their income on average.

A man stands beside a gate with his arms folded.

"The battle against Airbnb is very difficult," says Nicola Ussardi, co-founder of Assemblea Sociale per la Casa (ASC), a community housing group dedicated to helping Venetians find homes.

"It's like trying to win against Coca Cola."

It's not that the Venetians want tourists to stop coming — visitors inject about $9 billion a year into the local economy — but they desperately want more say over the seemingly uncontrollable influx of people.

And it's a mighty struggle.

Many find the massive cruise ships that sail right into the Venice lagoon during the six-month tourist season intolerable.

A cruise ship in the background is nearly as large as a large dome in Venice, while gondolas and vaporetto pass through a canal.

Last year the city hosted 594 cruise ships. They tower above the city skyline and critics say the currents created as the ships pass by are damaging the Renaissance buildings.

There is some dispute about the extent of erosion, but the damage from pollution is widely accepted.

One cruise ship has been shown to emit as many air pollutants as 1 million cars daily.

A sign with the words No Grandi Navi in a window.

"They are destroying Venice, they are physically destroying Venice, physically destroying our lungs," activist Tommaso Cacciari says.

"It's kind of the most invasive, stupid tourism I have ever seen."

Mr Cacciari is a founding member of the anti-cruise ship movement "No Grandi Navi", or No Big Ships.

Each year the group sails a noisy flotilla of small boats around the ships to protest against their presence. But nothing seems to change.

A man kneeling beside the ocean lifts a rock.

"Cruise ships are not giving money to the city, are not giving money to the workers, the bars and to the taxi drivers," Mr Cacciari says.

"They're keeping the money concentrated in a very few hands, and these few hands are very powerful. Some politicians are very tied with these interests."

In the long run though, crowds of tourists pose a lesser threat to Venice than the very thing they come to see — water.

Venice could go under

Rising sea levels are drowning Venice.

Local engineer and scientist Giovanni Cecconi says Venice could be gone in 80 years.

In 50 years the entire ground floor of the city will be under water in the worst-case scenario.

And 30 years after that, buildings would be destroyed.

Venice flooded by a high tide in November 2018

"We'll be a ghost town, in the worst-case scenario," he says.

Venice is pinning its hopes on an engineering solution that Mr Cecconi helped design — a $9.6 billion storm surge barrier called MOSE (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico).

The project is years overdue and was at the heart of one of Italy's biggest corruption scandals.

Venice's former mayor and 34 other officials were arrested for embezzling $30 million of public funds. City authorities hope MOSE will finally be operating later this year.

According to Mr Cecconi, MOSE will be a good stopgap, but not the complete solution.

"Not forever, but it can save Venice for the next 50 years in case of the worst scenario, or for 100," he says.

A man stands with his hands in his pocket

Venice's problems have UNESCO on high alert.

Later this year it will decide whether to put the city on the World Heritage endangered list.

This would allow it to offer immediate financial assistance and advice to the city's caretakers, a move that could force local and national authorities in Italy to make some hard choices about how to save Venice.

"The problem is that we are destroying the city," Mr Cacciari says.

"We are choosing to kill it for money, a little bit of money now, without thinking of what will happen tomorrow."

Watch Saving Venice on Foreign Correspondent at 8pm on ABC TV.

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Venice should prioritize families before tourism, says the city’s archbishop

SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE

THANAN | Shutterstock

Now that Italy has banned cruise ships from Venice’s waters, the lagoon city is on its way to becoming “the world capital of sustainability,” says Archbishop Francesco Moraglia, who called for making the city more affordable for its residents.

The historic city is in crisis as mass tourism threatens to displace its residents, and turn Venice into something akin to Disney World — a popular destination rather than a functioning city. In 2019 as many a record 25 million tourists visited Venice. And the increase in visitors comes at a steep price — about 1,000 Venetians leave for good each year.

Over-tourism threatens Venice

After UNESCO threatened to put Venice, a protected world heritage site, on its endangered list, the government banned cruise ships larger than 25,000 tons from docking in its waters. Veneto officials have also proposed a plan to reboot its tourist industry in a way that would make the city more livable for its residents.  The plan would limit day-trippers, increase the number of permanent residents, encourage startups, limit private apartment rentals, and protect Venice’s artisans, according to an ABCNews report.

Archbishop Moraglia told Vatican News that the city should prioritize the needs of families and the elderly over tourism, reported Catholic News Service.

“The risk is (the city) becomes just a container that offers opportunities for events and exhibitions, just a huge stage. The real challenge for Venice is remaining a livable city,” he said.

“I believe that this city, besides becoming the world capital of sustainability, could truly become a study in the church’s social teachings,” Moraglia told Vatican News.

A plan for sustainable tourism

As much as over-tourism has created woes for Venice, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed just how dependent the city is on its visitors. Lost revenue hit tourism-dependent businesses hard, and even public transport had to be reduced without a steady flow of tourists to help pay its way, according to the ABCNews story.

A proposal for a more sustainable tourism would require “diverting tourists to new destinations, encouraging more over-night stays, discouraging day trips and enabling the repopulation of the city with new residents,” according to the report.

Basilica of Santa Maria della Salute

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Venice Tackles Mass Tourism with Group and Speaker Bans

Venice Tackles Mass Tourism with Group and Speaker Bans

In its latest move to ease the pressure of mass tourism, Venice has set a new limit of 25 people on organized tour groups visiting the city starting in June 2024.

The use of loudspeakers , which can “generate confusion and disturbances,” will also be prohibited, authorities announced over the weekend.

Controlling Chaotic Crowds

The new policies aim to improve the flow of tourist groups through Venice’s historic squares and bridges, where bottlenecks frequently lead to chaotic crowding.

The regulations will also apply to the popular nearby islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello.

“It’s about promoting sustainable tourism and guaranteeing the protection and safety of the city,” said Elisabetta Pesce, Venice's head of public safety.

Venice draws over 30 million visitors per year, the vast majority coming only for the day.

Residents have long complained that the swarms of tourists erode their quality of life and damage the fragile environment.

Ongoing Struggle to Preserve a Treasured City

The latest measures represent just the newest phase in Venice’s ongoing struggle to shield its treasures from being loved to death.

The city has already banned large cruise ships from the iconic Giudecca Canal and recently announced that starting April 2024, day-trippers will have to pay a €5 ($5.30) fee to enter during peak times.

The surging popularity of cheap air travel in recent decades has left many European destinations facing similar problems of “overtourism.”

However, the impact has hit few places harder than Venice, a city of just 50,000 residents that welcomes up to five times as many visitors per day during peak season.

In Danger of Losing its Soul

The flood of tourists has hollowed out Venice’s population and altered its economy, increasingly turning the historic center into a theme park.

The concentration of tourist rentals has driven housing costs out of reach for many locals.

Last September 2023, the number of tourist lodging beds actually surpassed the resident population for the first time.

Preserving Venice’s remaining community has become an urgent priority to save the sinking city’s soul.

UNESCO Had Threatened to Label Venice “Endangered”

The uncontrolled tourism influx has also taken an environmental toll, severely threatening the lagoon ecosystem.

The United Nations cultural agency UNESCO cited tourism's impact as one reason for twice considering adding Venice to its list of endangered World Heritage sites.

The recent moves to regulate tourism helped convince UNESCO to hold off on issuing the dreaded “endangered” label.

However, the World Monitor Group stressed that Venice still urgently needs a sustainable tourism strategy.

Ongoing Vigilance Critical

Venetian activists celebrated the new group size limits and loudspeaker ban as important steps toward a tourism policy focused on conservation rather than promotion.

However, they stressed that continued vigilance will be critical.

“The regulations are only as good as their enforcement,” warned Jane Rossi, founder of the citizen group Venessia.com. “If the rules prove effective, they could provide a blueprint for other destinations facing their own tourism crises.”

ETIAS Requirements Still Apply

The new restrictions will not impact European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) eligibility or requirements for visitors once the scheme launches in May 2025.

Both short-term tourists and long-term residents from approved countries outside the European Union (EU) will still need to obtain standard ETIAS approval before traveling to Venice or elsewhere in Europe’s Schengen Zone.

However, the regulations could eventually force changes to immigration policies if depopulation threatens Venice’s standing as a World Heritage Site.

UNESCO has warned Venice risks losing its crucial cultural designation if the historic center’s permanent population falls below 40,000 — a fate that could make the city far less attractive to newcomers.

Preserving Venice’s Allure for Future Generations

Venice must take bold actions to retain residents and remain vibrant while welcoming tourists.

Achieving this delicate balance is critical not just for current immigrants and second-homeowners but also to maintain Venice’s longstanding appeal to wide-eyed foreign students, entrepreneurs, and others flocking to sample its splendors.

Losing the hard-won cultural riches that have accrued over Venice’s thousand-year history would represent a tragedy for Europe and the world.

The latest attempts to alleviate tourism’s pressures offer a modicum of hope that this magnificent, improbable city can be preserved for ages to come.

The Battle to Save Venice’s Soul Rages On

Venice finds itself locked in an existential battle between economic imperatives and conservation necessities.

The latest restrictions rightfully prioritize protecting fragile structures and residents’ standard of living over tourists’ desires for unfettered access.

However, striking the right balance remains extremely tricky.

Tourism provides the lion’s share of local jobs and revenue.

Overzealous regulations risk killing the golden goose.

Venetians face difficult debates ahead over how to welcome guests from around the world without sacrificing what makes their home so uniquely special.

The new decree limiting group sizes suggests local leaders understand the gravity of these decisions.

However, the global spotlight shone on this jewel of human creativity ensures continued pressures from many sides.

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Venice Revealed

Venice Revealed

mass tourism threatens venice

Overtourism in Venice: A Responsible Tourist’s Guide

This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you book a tour or hotel through my link I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. By supporting me through these links, you’re helping me keep this site awesome and deliver top-notch content to you. Your support means the world to me, and I’m incredibly grateful for it!

Imagine standing on the Rialto Bridge, gazing at the Grand Canal, a sight that has captivated visitors for centuries. Now imagine that view obscured by throngs of tourists, the waterways congested with boats, and the air filled with noise. This is the reality of mass tourism in Venice.

Venice, a city that has stood the test of time, is now facing a modern crisis. The city’s charm and historical significance have made it a bucket-list destination for millions, leading to a phenomenon known as over-tourism. 

But what does this mean for Venice and, more importantly, for you as a potential visitor? Is Venice still worth visiting ?

As responsible travelers, we all want to enjoy the beauty of our destination without contributing to its degradation. This guide will help you understand the impact of over-tourism in Venice and provide practical tips on how you can minimize your footprint, avoid the tourist traps , and enhance your experience in this unique city.

So, let’s embark on this journey of sustainable tourism and discover how we can help preserve Venice for future generations.

What’s the worst time to visit Venice? Click here to find out!

How Many Tourists Visit Venice Each Year?

crowded bridge in Venice

Environmental Impact of Mass Tourism

The environmental consequences of mass tourism in Venice are significant and multifaceted. The city’s canals, the lifeblood of Venice, are suffering from pollution caused by motorized boats. The wake from these boats accelerates the erosion of building foundations, threatening the structural integrity of the city’s historic architecture.

Not only that but, the constant foot traffic from millions of visitors each year contributes to the wear and tear of the city’s historic buildings and monuments. The delicate stonework of Venice’s iconic structures is not equipped to handle such a volume of visitors, leading to accelerated degradation.

Waste management is another major issue. The waste generated by tourists often ends up in the canals, further damaging the fragile lagoon ecosystem. Venice’s waste management system, designed for a much smaller population, struggles to cope with the volume of waste produced during peak tourist season.

Crowds in piazza san marco

Social and Cultural Impact of Mass Tourism

Overtourism in Venice has profound social and cultural implications. The influx of tourists has led to an increase in the cost of living, making it unaffordable for many local people. Rising property prices, driven by the demand for holiday rentals, have forced many residents to move out of the city center or even leave Venice entirely.

This mass exodus of local people from the historic center is leading to the loss of community spirit and identity. Neighborhoods that were once vibrant with local life are becoming ghost towns, inhabited only by tourists during the day and empty at night.

Traditional shops and markets, which were once the heart of Venetian community life, are being replaced by souvenir stalls and fast-food outlets to cater to tourists. This shift is eroding the city’s unique culture and heritage, turning Venice into a theme park version of its former self.

mass tourism threatens venice

The cultural heritage of Venice is also at risk. The pressure to cater to tourist tastes can lead to the commodification of local culture, where traditions are modified or staged for tourist consumption. This not only misrepresents Venetian culture but also undermines the authenticity of the visitor experience.

It’s ironic that the city depends on the tourism industry to make money but it is this very thing that threatens its existence.

Cruise Ships in Venice

Cruise ships have long been a contentious issue in Venice. The city, with its delicate lagoon ecosystem and historic architecture, is particularly vulnerable to the impact of these massive vessels.

Firstly, the environmental impact of cruise ships in Venice is significant. These ships, due to their size and the volume of passengers they carry, produce a large amount of pollution, both in terms of waste and emissions. This pollution can have detrimental effects on the water quality of the lagoon and the air quality in the city.

Secondly, the physical presence of the ships themselves poses a threat. The waves created by the cruise ships as they pass through the Giudecca Canal have been linked to the erosion of the foundations of buildings, contributing to the subsidence issues that Venice already faces.

Lastly, the influx of day trippers from cruise ships can contribute to over-tourism , overwhelming the city’s resources and infrastructure. This can lead to a degradation of the quality of life for residents and potentially harm the city’s cultural heritage.

lines for gondola in front of hard rock cafe

How Tourists Can Practice Sustainable Tourism

Travel during off-peak seasons.

One of the most effective ways to alleviate the pressure of over-tourism is to visit Venice during the off-peak seasons. This not only helps distribute the visitor numbers throughout the year but also offers a more authentic and enjoyable experience. Venice in the quieter months reveals a different, more intimate side that’s often lost in the summer rush.

Traveling during the off-peak seasons also has economic benefits. Prices for accommodation and flights are often lower, and you’ll find fewer crowds at popular attractions. This means you can explore the city at a leisurely pace, taking the time to appreciate the details that make Venice unique. You’ll also avoid the tourist tax if you are only planning to spend one day in Venice.

Read the full article on the best times to visit Venice!

Visiting in the off-peak seasons allows you to experience Venice’s cultural events and traditions that are not typically part of the summer tourist itinerary. From the atmospheric misty days of December and January to the vibrant Carnevale in February , each season in Venice has its own unique charm.

ca macana masks local business

Support Local Businesses

Choosing to spend your money at local businesses is another crucial step towards responsible tourism. This includes dining at local trattorias, shopping at traditional markets , and purchasing authentic Venetian crafts. By doing so, you’re supporting the local economy and helping preserve the unique culture and traditions of Venice.

When you support local businesses , you’re investing in the local community. You’re helping to keep traditional Venetian crafts alive, supporting local farmers and producers, and contributing to the sustainability of the local economy. Plus, you’re likely to find unique souvenirs and enjoy authentic local cuisine that you won’t find in tourist-oriented shops and restaurants.

Remember, every euro spent on a local business is a vote for a sustainable and authentic Venice. So, make your vote count!

mass tourism threatens venice

Respect Local Customs and Regulations

Venice is not just an open air museum; it’s a living, breathing city with its own customs and rules. As people visiting, it’s our responsibility to respect these. This includes simple actions like walking on the right, not blocking bridges, and disposing of litter properly. It’s also important to respect the city’s artistic heritage by not defacing monuments or attaching “love locks” to bridges.

Respecting local customs also means being mindful of the local community. Venice is a residential city, and many of the seemingly quaint and picturesque spaces are actually people’s homes. So, keep noise levels down, especially at night, and avoid congregating in residential areas.

Venice has specific regulations designed to preserve the city’s heritage and environment. For example, it’s forbidden to feed the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square as it damages the historic buildings. Similarly, swimming in the canals is not allowed due to safety and hygiene reasons.

Wrapping It Up

As a tourist, you have a significant role in preserving Venice for future generations. More sustainable tourism travel choices and behaviors have a direct impact on the city and its inhabitants. By practicing responsible tourism, you can help minimize the impact of over-tourism and contribute to the sustainability of this beautiful city.

Remember, Venice is more than just a collection of historic buildings and picturesque canals. It’s a living city with a rich culture and vibrant community. As visitors, we have the privilege of experiencing this unique city, and with that privilege comes the responsibility to preserve it.

So, when you visit Venice, take the time to appreciate its beauty, immerse yourself in its culture, and respect its customs. Choose to travel during off-peak seasons, support local businesses, and follow local regulations. These small actions can make a big difference.

If you need more information to help plan the perfect trip to Venice, make sure to check out the articles below!

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Venice at risk: Climate change, mass tourism threaten UNESCO heritage status

Full moon over the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy, July 30, 2023. (AFP Photo)

UNESCO experts have suggested that Venice and its lagoon should be included in its list of World Heritage in Danger due to Italy's insufficient efforts in protecting the city from the impacts of climate change and the challenges posed by mass tourism.

UNESCO World Heritage Centre experts regularly review the state of the UN cultural agency's 1,157 World Heritage sites, and at a meeting in Riyadh in September, a committee of 21 UNESCO member states will review more than 200 sites and decide which to add to the danger list.

For nearly 10 of these sites, the experts recommend that member states put them on the danger list, among which already are the historic center of Odesa , Ukraine, the town of Timbuktu in Mali, and several sites in Syria, Iraq, and Libya.

A view of the Arsenal in Venice's Sestiere di Castello district, Italy, July 29, 2023. (AFP Photo)

Other sites recommended to be put on the danger list this year are the cities of Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine.

"Resolution of long-standing but urgent issues is hindered by a lack of overall joint strategic vision for the long-term preservation of the property and low effectiveness of integrated coordinated management at all stakeholder levels," UNESCO said.

UNESCO said corrective measures proposed by the Italian state are "currently insufficient and not detailed enough." It added that Italy "has not been communicating in a sustained and substantive manner since its last Committee session in 2021 when UNESCO had already threatened to blacklist Venice.

The agency said it hoped that "such inscription will result in greater dedication and mobilization" of local and national stakeholders to address long-standing issues.

Tourists walk through flooded St Mark's Square after unusually high water levels in Venice, Italy, August 1, 2023. (Reuters Photo)

A spokesperson for the Venice municipality told Reuters the city "will carefully read the proposed decision published today by the Center for UNESCO's World Heritage Committee and will discuss it with the government".

Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has been struggling with mass tourism for years. On a single day during the 2019 Carnival, some 193,000 people squeezed into the historic center. Venice has been preparing to introduce a fee for day-trippers to control visitor numbers but has been delayed by objections.

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Venice is limiting tourist groups to 25 people in 2024

The local government in Venice previously announced plans to test a new tourist tax on day-trippers.

Gondolas on Canal Grande with historic Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute in the background in Venice, Italy

The Italian city of Venice announced new limits Saturday on the size of tourist groups, the latest move to reduce the pressure of mass tourism on the famed canal city.

Starting in June, groups will be limited to 25 people, or roughly half the capacity of a tourist bus, and the use of loudspeakers, "which can generate confusion and disturbances," will be banned, the city said in a statement.

The city official charged with security, Elisabetta Pesce, said the policies were aimed at improving the movement of groups through Venice's historic center as well as the heavily visited islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello.

The city previously announced plans to test a new day-tripper fee this year. The $5.45 per person fee will be applied on 29 peak days between April and mid-July, including most weekends. It is intended to regulate crowds, encourage longer visits and improve the quality of life for Venice residents.

The U.N. cultural agency cited tourism's impact on the fragile lagoon city as a major factor in it twice considering placing Venice on UNESCO's list of heritage sites in danger.

The city escaped the first time by limiting the arrival of large cruise ships through the Giudecca Canal and again in September when it announced the roll-out of the day-tripper charge, which had been delayed when tourism declined during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You might have to pay a fee to take a day trip to Venice next year

Anyone taking a day trip to Venice might have to pay a fee starting next year if a newly approved test run goes well.

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Race to visit places threatened by climate change 'before it's too late'

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Travellers are racing to see parts of the world that could soon vanish forever due to the effects of climate change, in a trend known as "last-chance tourism".

Travel and tourism is responsible for between 8% and 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 report from the World Travel and Tourism Council . As the planet warms, many of Earth's natural wonders – such as coral reefs, glaciers and archipelagos – "are at risk of damage and disappearance", said The New York Times 's Desiree Ibekwe. 

A growing number of travellers are seeking to visit such sites "before it's too late". But experts warn that the trend threatens to accelerate the cycle of destruction.

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What are the issues?

Popular at-risk destinations include the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in the French Alps, where thousands of people go each year to ski. Like many other glaciers, it is "melting rapidly", said Ibekwe. A new ski lift opened recently to allow visitors to "stay closer to the retreating ice", a move that has proved controversial. 

"At some point, you have to leave the glacier alone," one long-time traveller to the famous ski spot told NYT correspondent Paige McClanahan. "There's big machinery being installed. Where will it stop?"

That question is increasingly pertinent, said McClanahan. Throughout history, "humans have raced to be the first to scale a peak, cross a frontier, or document a new species or landscape", but "now, in some cases, we're racing to be the last."

Even well-meaning media coverage intended to inspire action can contribute to the problem. Last-chance tourism is happening mostly in areas that "make it into the headlines", Eke Eijgelaar, an environmental researcher at the NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, told The Independent in 2018.

"With more and more tourists looking for new and exotic things, they are a bit more attracted by media accounts of coral losses at the Great Barrier Reef and sinking images of Venice, and then choose that as their destination," he said.

And as tourist numbers rise, not all sectors of the global tourism industry are acting responsibly. "I've seen unregulated mass tourism in much of Asia and Micronesia, where snorkellers and divers are let loose with no instructions," said ecologist Peter Mumby.

Will it stop?

Defenders of tourism cite the benefits for communities that need an economic boost. The global travel industry supported 333 million jobs in 2019, said The Times , and an estimated one-sixth of the world's population relied on that income.

There is also evidence that visiting an ecological site may lead people to become more aware of their own impact on the environment. In a 2022 study of summer visitors to Mer de Glace, 80% said they would "try to learn more about the environment and how to protect it". Another 82% said they would stop visiting glaciers if doing so would protect them, while 77% said they would reduce their water and energy consumption.

The researchers behind the study concluded that nature-based tourism can "help clarify visitors' intentions to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours" – but more research is needed to see whether tourists follow through with their intentions. 

Long-term thinking is needed to protect ecologically fragile tourism sites, said Rachel Dodds, a professor of hospitality and tourism management from Toronto, speaking to The Independent.

"Without proper management and thinking about the limits to acceptable change, places are being ruined beyond repair," Dodds said. "Tourism is planned for the short-term, and policies or plans are not developed with the medium or long-term impacts."

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IMAGES

  1. Venice’s identity is threatened by mass tourism and flooding. The city

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  2. Venice is facing multiple tourism threats and many Venetians now want controls on visitors

    mass tourism threatens venice

  3. Venice, Italy, Is Being Destroyed by Tourism and Flooding

    mass tourism threatens venice

  4. Anti-tourism protesters form human chain in Venice

    mass tourism threatens venice

  5. Anti-tourism protesters form human chain in Venice

    mass tourism threatens venice

  6. Venice residents protest against excessive tourism

    mass tourism threatens venice

COMMENTS

  1. Venice's Overtourism Threatens Its World Heritage Status

    Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has been struggling with mass tourism for years. On a single day during the 2019 Carnival, some 193,000 people squeezed into the historic center.

  2. Venice, Italy threatened by mass tourism, could become UNESCO "world

    As a resident of Venice, she worries that her city is becoming merely a backdrop for selfies. While the number of visitors has grown rapidly, the local population is dwindling. In 1951 there were ...

  3. The Impact Of Mass Tourism In Venice

    An increased cost of living. Higher cost of housing. A decrease in quality of life (traditional shops replaced by low-quality souvenir shops, constant, for example) Lack of spaces for the youth. Lack of rewarding job opportunities. All of the above can be linked directly to the impact caused by the dramatic increase in mass tourism in Venice.

  4. UNESCO recommends putting Venice on its heritage danger list

    Record flooding in Venice threatens historical treasures (2019) ... the impacts of climate change and mass tourism threaten to cause irreversible changes to the OUV [outstanding universal value ...

  5. Sinking city: how Venice is managing Europe's worst tourism crisis

    The centre also tracks tourism flows, and has concluded that Venice's maximum carrying capacity is 55,000 tourists per day, or 20 million per year if European safety standards are to be ...

  6. Rising Sea Levels And Mass Tourism Are Sinking Venice ...

    Rising Sea Levels And Mass Tourism Are Sinking Venice, Threatening City's Future Venetians fear for the future of their city. Inundation by high tides and tourists is wrecking the island city's ...

  7. A tale of 2 cities: Venice residents torn between mass tourism and a

    In the 1970s, upwards of 150,000 people resided in Venice, but today it's home to just over 50,000, with the population shrinking by 1,000 each year. Without tourists, there is hardly anyone left ...

  8. Venice's identity is threatened by mass tourism and flooding. The city

    It is the lowest form of mass tourism that is wrecking Venice," Mr. Basso says. Open this photo in gallery: Retired professor Costanza Azzi, 82, saw flooding in the lower level of her Venice ...

  9. Venice counts cost of mass tourism as cruise ship conflict rages

    Yet progress has been slow. Unesco, the UN agency, said this week that it would consider putting Venice on its endangered list if a permanent ban on cruise ships docking in the city centre was not ...

  10. Venice could be added to danger list after 'insufficient' measures to

    Venice is under threat of being added to a danger list of heritage sites over the impact of mass tourism and climate change on the city. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural ...

  11. Venice to ban large tourist groups and loudspeakers

    Venice is to ban loudspeakers and tourist groups of more than 25 people, in a bid to ease the impact of mass tourism on the Italian city. The new rules will come into effect from June, the city ...

  12. Venice against overtourism: new measures from summer 2022

    Venice has always been decreed as the world capital of mass tourism, with a ratio of 370 visitors per year for every resident in the historic centre: an unsustainable figure. As early as 2019, the administration had set out to put in place restrictive measures to improve the city's situation, trying to aim for more sustainable tourism.

  13. Venice Overtourism: How the City Deals with Mass Tourism

    The Venice Tourist Tax is a fee that visitors must pay to enter the city. Initially planned to be implemented in January 2022, the tax has been postponed multiple times and is now expected to be in effect by at least 2024. The tax will range from 3 to 10 euros, depending on the tourist flow on a given day.

  14. Can Venice turn the tide on mass tourism?

    In Venice, the recent pause in tourism provided by the pandemic has fuelled local protests calling for the government to seize the moment and turn the tide on mass tourism.

  15. Venice is facing multiple tourism threats and many Venetians now want

    Foreign Correspondent discovers Venice is facing multiple threats, but the sheer weight of visitors is the one that many native Venetians find most overwhelming.

  16. 'Tourism is killing Venice, but it's also the only key to survival'

    Venice has topped travellers' bucket lists for centuries, but in recent years the city has struggled to cope with mass tourism, while tension has grown between visitors and locals. Advertisement By the 17th century, a trip to Venice had become a rite of passage for upper class northern Europeans, who flocked to the lagoon city as part of the ...

  17. Is Venice at war with itself?

    Why cities like Venice don't want mass tourism. 02:50 - Source: CNN. Best of Travel 16 videos. Video Ad Feedback. Why cities like Venice don't want mass tourism ... As mass tourism increases ...

  18. Venice should prioritize families before tourism, says the city's

    The historic city is in crisis as mass tourism threatens to displace its residents, and turn Venice into something akin to Disney World — a popular destination rather than a functioning city ...

  19. Venice Tackles Mass Tourism with Group and Speaker Bans

    In its latest move to ease the pressure of mass tourism, Venice has set a new limit of 25 people on organized tour groups visiting the city starting in June 2024. ... However, the regulations could eventually force changes to immigration policies if depopulation threatens Venice's standing as a World Heritage Site.

  20. Overtourism in Venice: A Responsible Tourist's Guide

    The environmental consequences of mass tourism in Venice are significant and multifaceted. The city's canals, the lifeblood of Venice, are suffering from pollution caused by motorized boats. ... It's ironic that the city depends on the tourism industry to make money but it is this very thing that threatens its existence. Cruise Ships in ...

  21. Venice at risk: Climate change, mass tourism threaten UNESCO heritage

    Venice, known for its canals and cultural sites, has been struggling with mass tourism for years. On a single day during the 2019 Carnival, some 193,000 people squeezed into the historic ...

  22. Venice is limiting tourist groups to 25 people in 2024

    Posted: 12:31 p.m. EST Dec 30, 2023. The Italian city of Venice announced new limits Saturday on the size of tourist groups, the latest move to reduce the pressure of mass tourism on the famed canal city. Starting in June, groups will be limited to 25 people, or roughly half the capacity of a tourist bus, and the use of loudspeakers, "which can ...

  23. Mass Tourism Threatens Venice

    Mass Tourism Threatens Venice. Venice, one of the world's most beautiful cities, is facing environmental disaster . Italia Nostra, an environmental organization says that Venice can handle about 30,000 tourists every day, far less than the 60,000 that come to the lagoon city now. It suggests that Venice attract fewer, but richer tourists ...

  24. Why last-chance tourism is latest controversial travel trend

    Travellers are racing to see parts of the world that could soon vanish forever due to the effects of climate change. Travel and tourism is responsible for 8-11% of global greenhouse gas emissions ...

  25. Without mass tourism: discover five charming alternatives for Venice

    Without mass tourism: discover five charming alternatives for Venice. In high season, there are often more than 100,000 visitors a day in the city. The passage of large cruise ships was banned in 2021, this summer tourists will have to expect an entry fee and larger travel groups are no longer allowed. In addition to cute, old fishermen's houses, walkers can discover a charming village of ...