Recently, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro stressed, in an interview with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, that Venice remains accessible and open, and does not intend to impose a limit on the number of visitors in one day. He considers it possible that the entry fee will have a deterrent effect.
“The city needs to be suitable for both those who live there and those who visit it”, argues Brugnaro. “On certain days with particularly high footfall, there is a danger that this may not occur.”
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Venice received 5 million tourists per year, and a comparable figure should be reached by 2024. Among them, there are always those who do not maintain due respect, complain residents and politicians. Therefore, in recent years the city hall has increasingly tightened the rules for visitors.
Under the slogan Enjoy Respect Venezia, the website www.enjoyrespectvenezia.it offers a whole catalog of rules of conduct. It is prohibited, for example, to sit on bridges and stairs, dive in canals, walk around the city in bathing suits, feed pigeons or throw rubbish on the ground. Fines can reach 500 euros (R$2768.56), but the press department does not report the total collected by the city hall.
New rules also for tourist groups
As for the new entrance fee, around 700 thousand euros are expected to be raised in the first year (R$ 3.87 million), to be invested in urban cleaning and improving tourist offerings – as is already the case with the entrance fee. overnight stay. Applied since 2011, it ranges from one to five euros per night, depending on the hotel category and the season. In 2023, it earned Venice 34 million euros (R$188.26 million).
