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Venice decides it's time to ban cruise ships
Cruise ships will no longer be permitted to dock in Venice starting 1st of August!
We all know about Venice, Italy, the lagoon city built on countless islets where you can't help but watch the gondolas sailing every which way while a serenade of Italian music sounds throughout the city.
It'd be hard to skip its many tourist sights in any conversation on the city — the world-famous Basilica di San Marco being the first to come to mind. It's also not news that Venice has a limited amount of space for humans, and we've probably all seen photos of the city flooded by the masses. Things are set to change in Venice soon and learn more about it, read onwards pirates!
Details
As of August 1st, Venice plans to implement it's change. As you know, the city attracts countless tourists from home and abroad. However, the space in the city is rather restrictive. As a result, the local residents are rather squeezed.
The city suffers from dramatically-high housing prices and the loss of many houses to Airbnb projects or hotel space. In addition, it's long-established that the massive throngs of tourists passing through the city cause a significant amount of problems. Every year, Venice attracts 23 million tourists (pre-COVID), so for such a small city the sheer number makes the chances of a few apples more than likely.
It makes sense that Venice is an attractive city, but its character is gradually being lost. Fewer and fewer people actually live in the city, and it's sinking slowly, which many cite as mainly due to mass tourism — floods are also becoming more common.
The city is economically very dependent on tourism, and it's clear that a lot of folks working there are working to make up for over a year of very little of it. However, pressure is coming from UNESCO, which coincidentally gives the Venetian lagoon and a good chunk of the city itself the prestigious World Heritage site title. This UN organization is fed up with the decline of the city and has threatened to blacklist Venice if they don't get the cruise ship situation under control.
As a result, Venice has now decided to ban cruise ships from the center of the city from the 1st of August until, perhaps, eternity. The Venetians want to avoid losing their UNESCO designation, so that means the common image of humongous passenger ships in the background of selfies taken in St. Mark's Square won't be making a comeback.
But cruise ships aren't being completely banned from the city, and it's predicted that at least some will start docking in the immediate area of the city. This would at least remove them from the background of the historic city, but we really wonder if it goes far enough to solve the over-tourism issue at hand, and moreover, if the UNESCO will actually be alright with it.