The morning began with around one hundred thousand arrivals and eight thousand tickets detached in the gazebos set up outside the train station. But the first day of testing the 5 euro entry ticket to enter the historic center of Venice was also marked by moments of tension, with some clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against the measure.
Until 4.05pm, the closing time of the limits, a total of 113 thousand arrivals and 15,700 paying people were registered in the Veneto capital, with an average of one ticket issued for every ten entries, according to the data released by the budget councilor Michele Zuin. This is because 97,600 exempt people also arrived in the historic center, among these 39,400 were guests in accommodation facilities where the tourist tax is already paid, while 2,100 were relatives of residents. Until the end of 2024, another 28 days will be dedicated to testing the measure, which resumes today to continue until May 5th. For the entire period, 13 thousand students and 20,400 workers were also registered as exempt from the ticket. Added to these are the 270 thousand residents and those born in the city, who can enter and exit the historic center without registration, showing only their identity document.
Despite the various possibilities for exemption, there were moments of tension when around 300 demonstrators, members of some social centres, attacked the gazebos set up for the payment of the ticket. The demonstration started from the train station and continued with a march to Piazzale Roma. The situation degenerated into some clashes with the police when the young people tried to overcome the security cordon to reach the area of the railway yard, where there was a checkpoint on vouchers, or on QRs that certify the exemption for categories that only need to register on the Municipality’s app. The mayor Luigi Brugnaro in particular ended up in the sights of the protesters, and the idea of a city transformed into a sort of “Veniceland”. The climate, however, was calmer in a second demonstration by the citizen committees against the ticket, who gathered near the QR checkpoint. There was also a brief confrontation with Mayor Brugnaro, which ended in a hug.
The mayor highlighted that «nothing has ever been done to regulate tourism, politicians don’t do it because they have no interest in doing so. I did it”. The mayor asked «sorry for the inconvenience but we have to do something. We can’t just talk, we have to try to do something and now we are doing it because we have the duty and task of leaving and preserving the city for the next generations.”
And to those who point out that the costs for the measure are lower than the proceeds, he pointed out that “it is not an expense, it is a way of making people understand that we need to change”.
