Venice has crossed a fatal line – due to over-tourism, residents are rapidly fleeing the city, as a result, this unique place risks becoming a ghost town without its permanent population. According to the Italian press, the reduction of the population to tourists has reached a “critical threshold”.
While the number of beds allocated for tourism in the city reached almost 50 thousand, the number of permanent residents of the city decreased to 49 thousand people. To understand the scale of the disaster, it is worth adding that in the early 1950s, the number of residents was about 175,000. The level below 50,000 was called the “critical threshold” – and Venice reached it in the summer of 2022. According to the associations Venessia.com and Ocio, the most popular tourist center of Venice and the islands of Murano and Burano lost an average of 2.4 inhabitants per day between 1997 and 2022. At the same time, the number of beds for tourist purposes increased by 4.8 per day.
The Ocio association said urban dwellers had been forced to migrate en masse due to the “expansionism of the tourism monoculture” and criticized the government’s inaction. “A city without residents turns into something else: an open-air museum, an amusement park,” the association said. As a result, Venice risks “ceasing to be a city,” they added.
This is also understood by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), where it was recommended to include Venice in the list of “heritage in danger of disappearing” due to problems caused by mass tourism. The proposal is expected to be discussed at the World Heritage Committee meeting on September 10-25.
We will remind you that Venice intends to fight against “one-day” tourists by introducing an entrance fee. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced last Wednesday that entry to the city on busy days will be by reservation and at an extra cost starting next year.