Honestly, people should just learn to travel off-peak. A lot of the big tourist hotspots feel so peaceful in the winter.
But then, it’s the winter.
I think more people should realize that some spots are just overrated.
I went to Paris a year ago. After hearing how much of a clusterfuck it is to go see the Mona Lisa painting I skipped it. My life surprisingly went on.
Part of the problem with cities like Venice is that there ends up being this large cost to preservation and limits on development which pushes the city to become a form of historic theme park in its best condition or a ruin in its worst.
The city can try to control the worst parts of tourism, but I feel like Venice is a city doomed to needing tourism to survive.
Many these cities are unsustainable as modern cities. Their creation and golden periods were marked by lavish spending of royalty and/or wealthy merchants (today’s billionaire class, but without jets and yachts to spend on). It’s almost impossible to rebuild to modern, tourist level usage without massive cash infusions and disruption of services for that maintenance.
You also have differences in what makes a city location good or not. Venice was a very defensible location with easy access to shipping, which was the foundation of its economy.
The economics of a trade hub has shifted a lot since then, usually requiring the port to move a lot more goods and generally being the connection point between land and sea.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The changes are part of the authorities’ effort to limit mass tourism and its negative effects on the northern Italian lagoon city.
Mass tourism has been causing problems for Venice — one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world — for many years.
The historic center with the famous Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and the many canals no longer has even 50,000 permanent residents.
In September, local officials decided to charge an admission fee of €5 ($5.50) for short-term visitors from April 2024.
In a report published in summer 2023, the UN cultural agency UNESCO pointed at over-tourism and over-development as some of the major threats to the Italian hotspot, with a growing number voices calling for the city to be placed on UNESCO’s list of heritage sites in danger.
Restricting tour groups to less than 25 people and the ban on loudspeakers will contribute to sustainable tourism, said Elisabetta Pesce, Venice’s city councilor for security.
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