Venice will this week begin charging day trippers for entry, a world first aimed at easing pressure on the Italian city drowning under the weight of mass tourism.
Tens of thousands more pour into the city’s narrow streets for the day, often from cruise ships, to see sights including St Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge. In Spain, the world’s second-most visited country after France, tens of thousands of people protested in the Canary Islands on Saturday to demand limits on visitor numbers to the archipelago.
But UNESCO threatened last year to put Venice on its list of heritage sites in danger, citing mass tourism and also rising water levels attributed to climate change.The idea had long been debated, but repeatedly postponed over concerns it would seriously dent tourist revenue and compromise freedom of movement.