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“We feel like foreigners in our own home” – Venice locals outnumbered by tourists, day-tripper entrance fee to start in 2024
Once the heart of a powerful maritime republic, Venice’s main island has lost more than 120,000 residents since the early 1950s, driven away by myriad issues but mainly a focus on mass tourism that has caused the city’s population to be dwarfed by the thousands of visitors who crowd its squares, bridges and narrow walkways each day.
Visitors to Venice returned in full force this summer after severe flooding in late 2019 and then the pandemic disrupted tourism. An average of 40,000 daytrippers poured into the city on peak days, prompting Venice’s local authority to announce it would enforce a long-mooted entrance ticket from next year.
One tourist ‘robinlmorris’ said: “I’ve been to Venice in summer and Kyoto in April, but nothing was as bad as Prague in September. “Wall to wall tourists and all the shops sold cheap tourist crap. The main square was full of bad street performers that had nothing to do with Prague. It felt more like medieval Disneyland than a real city. We didn’t like it all.” According to Euromonitor, tourists outnumber local residents by six to one in Prague, much less than in another top European destination.
Another tourist said: “I knew it would be busy, but it was a massive bucket list visit for me. There were so many people inside the palace that I could see way more people than the actual rooms and treasures. The Hall of Mirrors had no magic for me due to crowds and we felt like cattle being herded.”
An islander born and bred, Thelma, 87, shakes her head wearily as she speaks of the pitfalls of living in a village where tourists massively outnumber the locals. “It’s a bit like living in a museum,” she says. “You’ll be sitting in your living room and a face will appear at the window, peering inside to see what’s there.
“It’s not an exhibit, it’s me sitting in my house, but a lot of visitors seem to have the view that everything here is public because it’s historic. “I get a bit fed up, to be honest, of all the finger smudges on my windows and people resting against the house to have their sandwiches. “They even took the wooden trellis from behind my roses on the side of the house – what would they want with that?”
