When Venice introduced its tourist access fee, it made global headlines. Some hailed it as an innovative way to manage over-tourism. Others saw it as a worrying step towards turning one of Europe’s great living cities into a ticketed attraction. So what exactly is this charge, when did it start, and does it solve the problems Venice actually faces?
A Dolomites Day Trip Loop Without a Car
One of the most surprising things about Venice is that it also works as a gateway to the Dolomites without a car 🏔️. A particularly elegant loop begins by taking the train north through the mountains to Calalzo–Pieve di Cadore–Cortina.
When the Venice access fee began
Venice formally introduced its day-visitor access fee in 2024, following years of debate, delays, and pilot schemes. The idea was simple on paper: on selected high-pressure days, day visitors entering the historic city would pay €5 if registered in advance, rising to €10 for late payment. Overnight visitors are exempt, as they already pay an accommodation tax.
The city framed the measure as a crowd-management tool, not a revenue generator. Officials were keen to stress that Venice was not “charging admission,” but rather encouraging better visitor behaviour and discouraging short, high-impact visits.
In practice, however, the distinction is harder to maintain.
Why critics see it as a pedestrian toll
Although Venice avoids physical gates or barriers, the access fee effectively acts as a toll on pedestrians. It is triggered not by transport choices, environmental impact, or infrastructure strain, but simply by being present in the historic city on a chargeable day.
This creates several problems.
A visitor who walks in, spends money all day in local businesses, visits museums, and leaves respectfully pays the same as someone who arrives for an hour, takes photos, and leaves. Someone who returns on consecutive days pays repeatedly. Meanwhile, those staying overnight — including many higher-impact visitors — pay nothing extra at the point of entry.
This inevitably penalises slow, curious, repeat visits, the very type of tourism Venice claims to want more of.
Why transport-based charging would make more sense
Many urban planners argue that Venice is targeting the wrong lever. Cities facing congestion typically regulate how people arrive, not whether they are allowed to enter at all.
Alternative approaches could include:
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Higher peak-time vaporetto fares
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Increased parking and access charges at Piazzale Roma
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Terminal or arrival fees at Santa Lucia station
- An extra passenger facility supplement to use Venice and Treviso airports
- A toll to use the Ponte della Liberta (the bridge providing road access from Mestre)
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Substantially higher charges on cruise passengers
These options would align costs with infrastructure strain, rather than placing a flat charge on all day visitors regardless of impact.
Cruise tourism is particularly contentious. Cruise passengers arrive in large numbers, stay briefly, spend comparatively little per head, and create intense pressure on specific parts of the city. Yet politically, cruise operators are far harder to regulate than individual pedestrians.
What about additional charges on car rental in Venice?
Another option often raised is higher charges on car rental at Venice Marco Polo Airport and Piazzale Roma 🚗. The argument in favour is straightforward: rental cars require space, storage, and logistics in a highly constrained environment, and pricing could reflect that pressure. Even if the vehicles are not driven into Venice itself, they still occupy valuable land on the city’s edge, particularly around Piazzale Roma, where space is at a premium. In that sense, a surcharge could be justified as a way of internalising the spatial cost of car-based travel.
However, the counterargument is equally strong. Such a charge would effectively tax people leaving Venice, not those contributing to congestion within the historic centre. Many visitors pick up cars specifically to travel onwards to the Dolomites, Lake Garda, or rural Veneto — journeys that reduce pressure on Venice rather than increase it. Rental companies already pay heavily for storage, concessions, and operating space, meaning additional levies risk becoming a blunt instrument that discourages onward travel rather than managing urban crowding. As with many proposals around Venice, the challenge lies in distinguishing between impact-driven charging and policies that simply monetise proximity to a world-famous city.
However, in practice, renting a car near Piazzale Roma or close to Santa Lucia station is already extortionately expensive when compared with renting at Venice Marco Polo Airport. Choice is also extremely limited. At present, there appears to be only one major provider operating in this location, Sixt, whereas the airport offers a far wider range of rental companies, vehicle types, and pricing options. As a result, market forces already discourage city-centre car rental without the need for further intervention.
More importantly, arguments about over-tourism become blurred at this point. Motor fuel taxation relates primarily to the carbon impact of driving, not to pedestrian overcrowding within Venice. Cars rented at Piazzale Roma are not driven into the historic centre, and they do not contribute to congestion on footbridges, vaporetto stops, or narrow calli. Treating car rental as an over-tourism lever risks conflating environmental concerns with crowd management, when in reality pedestrian pressure in Venice is a relatively minor issue compared with broader questions about long distance transport emissions and regional travel patterns.
Venice is not alone — but it is the most extreme case
Venice is not the first historic destination to experiment with access controls.
Dubrovnik, often cited as a comparison, limits daily visitor numbers to its old town walls and charges admission to walk the ramparts. However, Dubrovnik’s system is spatially limited: the fee applies to a specific monument, not an entire living city. Similarly, the walled city of Carcasonne only charges for access to its castle and ramparts, not the city itself.
Other places, such as Machu Picchu in Peru or the Galápagos Islands, impose access restrictions, but these are protected sites rather than functioning urban centres.
Venice is different. Its entire historic core is a place where people live, work, commute, and attend school. Charging for entry risks blurring the line between city and attraction.
Could this spread to other Italian cities?
So far, Rome has not introduced a similar access fee, and doing so would be vastly more complex. Rome is geographically larger, socially more diverse, and lacks clear entry points. Milan, Florence, and Naples face overcrowding in specific areas, but none operate as a single, bounded environment in the way Venice does.
That makes Venice uniquely vulnerable to this kind of policy — and uniquely symbolic. If Venice can be monetised at the point of entry, critics argue, what stops other cities from following suit?
The risk of Disneyfication
The deeper concern is not the €5 itself, but what it represents. Once entry becomes a paid commodity, a city risks drifting towards Disneyfication — curated, controlled, and priced access replacing organic movement.
Venice already struggles with declining resident numbers, seasonal economies, and short-term tourism pressures. Turning access into a transaction risks reinforcing the idea that the city exists primarily for visitors, not residents.
Ironically, the fee may deter exactly the kind of visitor Venice needs most: those who come back repeatedly, explore beyond the obvious sights, and engage with the city over time rather than consuming it in a single day.
A blunt tool for a complex problem
Venice’s access fee is understandable. The city is fragile, overwhelmed, and politically constrained. But it is also a blunt instrument applied to a subtle problem.
Crowds are real. Infrastructure strain is real. But charging pedestrians for entry, while leaving higher-impact arrival modes comparatively untouched, risks solving the wrong problem — and creating new ones in the process.
Venice deserves better than becoming a city you have to buy your way into. The challenge now is whether this policy remains a limited experiment, or whether it quietly reshapes how historic cities across Europe think about access, movement, and who cities are really for.