Venice: an inelegant entry fee

Once a lady from Denver who grew up in Wyoming told me: “My boyfriend and I were sitting at the café Floriàn in Venice. We were served two hot chocolates. The waiter looked like coming out of a movie, the jug and the cups of the finest porcelain but above all the ‘smell of the lagoon blending with the notes of the little orchestra that cheered the customers of one of the most famous cafes in the world made me think: “Now I am living”.
Note that the lady, my interlocutor, lived her youth in a kind of natural paradise in Wyoming, she had a doctorate in logical philosophy, was teaching at the Colorado University and frequented a highly intellectual environment. So she was not talking about the ’emotion of a person jolted from the sad and routine normalcy into a fairy-tale world.
Venice can evoke the pleasure of the senses, whether it is a hot chocolate in San Marco square or a night of love in a hotel overlooking one of the city’s many rios or canals.
This has always been the magical and pandering charm of this city.
Yet there are those who try to degrade it. There is a trend today among the dominant political class at the local level that considers Venice only a money machine. So they support make as much of it as possible.
“In order to limit the ‘access of masses of single-day tourists who eat hot dogs and and make the city too crowded and too dirty” the municipality of Venice has thought of
launch a daily entrance fee.
The idea of the fee, starting at 5 euros, found its formalization this past September as a general rule and with specific rules and cases yet to be defined. It is expected to be implemented starting in the spring of 2024 and has found support among members of the city government majority. However, many reasonable criticisms have come from various influential voices. We summarize them in the remarks of the city councilor Gianfranco Bettin (Progressive Green Venice) “a tool that monetizes the damage but does not prevent it,” says . “What is needed to address the problem that with the ticket we would like to manage is to study and implement tools to block access on days when the tolerable threshold is exceeded (and, therefore, first define that threshold) and forms of free booking.”
Unesco recently returned to reiterate the threat of overtourism on the fragile city, with this warning , after several postponements had to be dealt with. But that it is a 5 euro ticket that will discourage visitor arrivals on critical days and regulate flows at the entrance to the historic lagoon center, seems really doubtful.
From our very modest point of view we Venice is a heritage of humanity, and every person worthy of being called a member of humanity should have the right to enjoy its beauty and charm by paying the unique tribute of friendship and respect.