Venice Italy: Popular city destination brings in new rules as part of measures to crack down on mass tourism

Venice has announced new rules as it cracks down on tourists. The new measures include banning loudspeakers and limiting tour group sizes to 25 people in order to limit the impact of over-tourism on the Italian city.

It comes after Venice introduced a €5 (£4) daily entry fee this year, after initially banning cruise ships from docking in the quarter in 2021. The scheme will initially be tested across 29 days from today (Thursday 25 April) until July in Venice.

After Sunday 14 July, the charge will be reportedly lifted. Day trippers visiting Venice between 8.30am and 4pm will be required to pay the fee, which equates to £4.28. Visitors can either download a QR code, while a kiosk has been set up for those not equipped with a smartphone.

Venice is one of the most visited places in Europe with its famous canals and historic quarter. The city has a population of around 250,000 people and saw more than 13 million visitors in 2019. Visitor numbers have fallen since, but they are expected to exceed pre-pandemic levels in the coming years.

According to Simone Venturini, the city’s councillor for tourism, Venice “affixed itself” to mass tourism in the 1960s and since then visitor numbers have surged to the point that during the busiest periods of the year it attracts an average of 40,000 people a day. The final push to enact the measure came after Unesco threatened last year to put Venice on its list of heritage sites in danger, citing mass tourism as one of the factors. In the end the UN cultural body did not add Venice after recognising its attempts to address the island's problems through its measures to reduce the impact of mass tourism.