Tourism in Rome, which has always been intense, has skyrocketed even more after the pandemic. It is the European city that has seen the biggest increase in visitors in 2023, by 45%, according to data from the City Council, with a record of 50 million travellers that it will already surpass this year. The effects on the historic centre, a UNESCO heritage site that had so far resisted, are increasingly palpable. Traditional shops are closing, luxury hotels are opening, finding an apartment is a utopia and things that were once normal, such as passing by the Trevi Fountain on the way somewhere and admiring it for a few seconds, have become impossible. It is now a circus that at any time is packed with tourists and street vendors, jostling to take a photo. So the City Council of Rome has decided to take measures: it plans to make it necessary to pay an entrance fee and reserve a time to visit the famous fountain, in order to limit the number of tourists.
This is not the first time that drastic measures have been considered. In 2017, there was talk of banning stopping in front of the fountain to speed up the flow of people. In principle, a symbolic price of one euro is now being considered, and it would be free for Romans. According to the City Council, the idea would be to pay for access to the steps next to the fountain, while it will be possible to continue to walk freely through the square and see it from afar. However, to get close to the water and perform the ritual of throwing a coin, you will have to book a time and pay. Everything is still to be specified, because it is not easy to organize logistically, but the mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, of the PD (centre-left), has already said that he thinks it is a good idea and they are going to study the formula to be applied. “It is a very specific hypothesis and we are already studying technical solutions,” he explained on Thursday.
Gualtieri says that the municipal police have been expressing their concern because the situation is becoming “technically difficult to manage”. The officers are no longer able to draw the attention of those who try to bathe, or wet their feet, or eat hamburgers while lounging on the sidelines. The aim is to offer “a more elegant experience”. That is, to give everyone the possibility of admiring the fountain in peace, without being overwhelmed. And also to ensure the proper maintenance of the site.
This is another step in the attempt to contain the tourist overcrowding in Rome, but in this case it is more significant, because it is a square on the public road, not an enclosed place. The visit to the Pantheon, another of the most visited monuments in the city and which was free to enter, began to be paid and with reservation, at a price of five euros, in July 2023. An entire city like Venice began charging five euros to enter the center last April.
Rome’s city council is considering the Trevi Fountain measure as part of a broader reflection on how to deal with tourism, which is already overwhelming the city. Fewer and fewer people live in the historic centre: in ten years the population has fallen by 38.2%, according to municipal data for 2023, to 23,000 residents, when in the time of Augustus it reached one million people. And in another tourist area, Trastevere, the decline has been 45%. Barely 13,000 people live there.
The cause is tourist apartments: the number of non-hotel accommodation registered has increased from 17,000 to 30,000 in six years, and another 10,000 illegal ones have been discovered in the last two years. But Italian municipalities besieged by the invasion of tourist apartments claim to have no legal instruments to regulate this phenomenon, which is the responsibility of the central government. “We would like to put a stop to it, perhaps for two or three years, to save the historical heritage, the quality of commerce and the right to residence, but our hands are tied,” lamented the municipal advisor for tourism in Rome, Alessandro Onorato.
Cities have also resorted to the tourist tax paid on accommodation, and what’s more, the government is considering raising it. Giorgia Meloni’s government is studying a tax of between five and 25 euros per night that would vary depending on the category of accommodation, an announcement in the Italian press last week that was poorly received by the hotel sector. Right now in Rome, the tax is between 3.5 and 10 euros. It is also planned, as a novelty, that the money raised will be used for cleaning and rubbish collection, since the dirtiness of the streets is a problem in many cities, especially Rome, and the cost falls on the residents.
Tourism in Italy has broken records after the pandemic and in 2023 even surpassed pre-2020 levels, with more than 134 million arrivals and 451 million overnight stays.
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