The city government hopes to use this to regulate the number of visitors.
The experiment begins on April 25, a national holiday in Italy. All visitors who want to go to the lagoon city between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. must pay the special tax of five euros. Day tourists must purchase a QR code online in advance, which is checked at the most important access points into the city. They must also obtain their entry ticket, which costs five euros, on the multilingual website set up by the municipality, www.cda.ve.it. Payment is made by credit card or Paypal.
Entrance fees are charged 29 days a year
The ticket can also be purchased in tobacconists. The entrance fee will be charged on a total of 29 days in 2024: from April 25th to 30th, from May 1st to 5th and on all other weekends (Saturdays and Sundays) until July 13th and 14th. This excludes the weekend of Republic Day (June 1st to 2nd), another national holiday in Italy. If you want to go to the smaller islands of Murano, Burano and Torcello, you don’t need a ticket.
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“It’s an experiment, the first in the world,” said Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro. He stubbornly defends the controversial measure. “Our goal is not to collect money, but to prevent the city from exploding. We want to make Venice more tourist-friendly, because it doesn’t just belong to the Venetians but to the whole world,” says Brugnaro. He promises “very gentle controls” that are random and should under no circumstances lead to queues. Several gates – not turnstiles – will be set up, allowing the majority of tourists to be intercepted.
Children under 14 do not have to pay
Locals and people born in Venice, property owners (even if they do not live in Venice), students and workers do not have to pay an entry fee. Children under 14, disabled people and accompanying persons are required to book but are not required to pay.
Day tourists who are caught with the entrance ticket without a QR code must expect a fine of between 50 and 300 euros. Venice’s tourism assessor, Simone Venturini, emphasized that the aim was not to seal off the city and that no upper limits would be introduced for the allocation of QR codes on the respective days.
Discussions about plans
The community’s plans are causing discussions. Arrigo Cipriani, 91-year-old innkeeper and owner of the legendary Harry’s Bar, once a meeting place for artists such as writer Ernest Hemingway, describes the entrance fee for day tourists as “harassment”. The ex-mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, was also critical. He called on tourists to disobey and not pay the entrance ticket because, in his opinion, it was “unconstitutional.” “It’s pure madness, these measures are completely illegal and unconstitutional. In no city in the world do you pay admission,” criticized Cacciari.
“In Venice, tourists already pay three times as much as residents for tickets, for museums, for everything. The explanation that Venice is purely a museum is untenable,” criticized Cacciari, a Venetian for generations.
The entry ticket for day tourists, on the other hand, is approved by hoteliers. “It is unacceptable that the only tax for visitors is the tourist tax, which only people staying in hotels pay,” said Vittorio Bonacini, president of the Venice Hoteliers Association (Ava). For Bonacini, testing the contribution is “a complex challenge” that the hoteliers are completely in agreement with.
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