For eleven days every winter, Venice turns itself into the world’s most elaborate costume party. Step into St. Mark’s Square on a Saturday afternoon during Carnevale, and you might spot a courtier in a gold-beaked plague mask posing beside the Basilica. A woman in a hooped gown the color of crushed raspberries glides past a café, entirely unbothered that hooped gowns and narrow Venetian bridges were never meant to coexist. Nobody is in a hurry.
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If a $5 fee is a good way to slow overtourism and protect the fragile ecosystem, then shouldn’t $10 work even better?
That’s the question in Venice, which has announced it will bring back last summer’s tourist tax—and double it to boot—for 2025.
Venice in 2024 introduced a €5 charge for visitors on 29 high-traffic peak-season dates, in an attempt to curb the crowds that sometimes overran its famous, but delicate, canals. The tourism office …
If you’re considering Venice as your next destination, you’ll have done your research and know exactly what you want to see and what to expect, so I’ll not be giving you a Venice ‘to-do list’ as such. Instead, I’ll encourage you to people watch instead. Step away from the well-trodden tourist path and see where the locals live.
While walking along the cobbled back streets of Venice, which are encased with tall ancient dwellings on …