With 120 islands, 177 canals, and 391 bridges, Venice is a truly entrancing and must-see global destination. However, last year the floating city introduced a tourist entry fee to combat the negative effects of mass tourism. Now Venice is doubling entry fees for 2025, just one of the latest self preservationist acts by a city heavily affected by tourism year-round.
Last April, Venice began charging day-trippers an entry fee of just over €5 to enter Venice from Italy’s mainland. Now, day visitors to Venice on certain specified dates must pay €10 for entry. For the 2025 tourist high season around 54 dates are slated to include an entrance fee, up from 29 days last year. Fee dates start on April 18 and afterwards will include every Friday, Saturday and Sunday between May and the end of July, according to CNN.
However, if you are a visitor entering Venice on these dates and staying the night, you can bypass the fee, as it only applies to day trip visitors. However, those who wish to bypass the fee must register for an exemption online.
Simone Venturini, Venice’s tourism councillor said at the BIT tourism fair in Milan that the pilot period in 2024 was successful and that the goal for the fee is clear. Venice hopes to “create a new system to manage tourist flow and disincentivize daytripper tourism in several periods, in line with the delicate and unique nature of the city, to guarantee the respect that it merits.”
Around 20 million people visit Venice annually, and though some stay overnight, the mass tourism has a negative effect on this fragile city which has been battling rising water levels since the 5th century, according to Rick Steves.
As hotspot destinations around the world work to combat overtourism, Venice’s entry fee offers one of the most direct interventions. Many cities have taken alternative preventative measures like limiting short-term rentals in city centers (Florence) and blocking the construction of new hotels (Amsterdam).
Those protected from these fees include residents of the city, along with people who were born there. Last year, some residents were not initially happy about the fee, claiming the intervention makes Venice into a theme park of sorts. One protest organizer, Ruggero Tallon, told CNN the protests were efforts to stand “against the mayor’s idea of a closed city, a museum city.”
For those who agree with Tallon, the entrance fee is pointless, and a non-solution to the problem of overtourism. “A ticket does nothing,” Tallon said. “It doesn’t stop the monoculture of tourism. It doesn’t ease the pressure on Venice. It’s a medieval tax and it’s against freedom of movement.” He proposed that the city be repopulated in order to ease mass tourism, claiming the city has more beds for tourists than for its 49,000 residents.
CNN reports that almost half a million visitors paid the entrance fee during the trial period last year, an effort which raised €2.4 million for the city.
