Perche

Sometimes new laws are passed in Italian towns and don't happen, but this one has passed, and it seems likely that this one will actually go forward.

There are too many tourists visiting the Cinque Terre (I don't know why some don't go to Porte Venere and other towns that right there and just as nice but not popularized). It's wrecking the experience for everyone, sort of like what has been happening to Venice which almost doesn't have a down season anymore, and Tuscany, where you can go to a small town of 1,000 people and be caught for an hour in a traffic jam to get in, and then not be able to stop because there is no place to park.

Starting this summer to visit Cinque Terre you have to obtain a pass to enter well in advance. They don't know how many passes will be available each day. That will be governed weekly by things like the weather. If the number of visitors that day has been reached and you show up, you will be given a pass for the following day.

The number of visitors has been just too much, and the streets and the paths linking the towns are just taking a pounding from having 2.5 million visitors to these tiny little towns that are no longer towns, but are more like a mini-amusement park.

They are hoping to be able to start this in three months, in time for high season, April through October. They say it is also a safety issue, as the train stations are so packed with tourists that they almost spill out onto the tracks while trains are whizzing by.

These things always change, and are never final, but this is the way it stands right now. The link is here, the picture of the path says it all:
http://genova.repubblica.it/cronaca/...91/?ref=search

Now, if only they'd do something like this for Venice.

sophiesophie

I just emailed this link to my friend who was there last fall:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...coastline.html

She was there early Nov, so it wasn't crowded except for 1 train. I assume they had reduced their train schedules during the off season?

I suppose this change could move much of the tourists to the off season?

It also mentions 60K people every day in Venice - is this all year or high season?

Perche

By November the crowds have died down, the cruise ships have stopped coming. The only problem is that for the Cinque Terre having been transformed from traditional, viable Italian towns to almost purely tourist villages, many businesses shut down for the winter because there is nothing for them to do. It's impossible to live in a city where when you step out your door you are packed into a crowd and cannot walk at a pace faster than a zombie. You cannot take a train to town because the trains are stuffed and you can't get on. So when the tourists are gone, so are the people. Italians don't live in those towns anymore, unless they are catering to the tourists. When the tourists are gone, they close down.

For Venice 60,000 per day seems right. They get over 23,000,000 per year, which is over 60,000. There is no low season anymore. Maybe a month or so in late December and January.

Venice is still not actually crowded at any time, because those 60,000 visitors are all packing themselves in around San Marco Square and the Rialto Bridge and points in between. There are no bad neighborhoods in Venice. It's all safe, everywhere, no matter how it looks. Anytime of the year, if you just stay away from those places, except very early or late in the day, you can be in quiet, natural, uncrowded Venice. But in the tourist areas, it can be very bad most times of the year.

Finkface

My husband is from a town on the Riviera. Not one of the Cinque Terre but a similar small town very nearby. When we lived there, the area was quaint and beautiful. The population swelled in the summer but it was mostly people from Milan etc. who kept apartments there to use in the summer months to escape from the big city. But it has now gotten so out of hand with hoards of tourists that we have stopped going altogether to visit family until late fall. Towns as far as Sestri Levante are now getting the overflow and are almost as bad in the summer. I think the only thing that has saved Porto Venere (my favorite town by far - more so than the CT) thus far is the lack of train service to get there. It is such a shame to see the way of life in those towns disappearing in favor of massive tourism.

rickg523

Cruise ships. The worst thing to happen to travel. Ever.

iisk8er

Was in Venice August 2014 and took the train to Florence and the station was crowded but not horrible. I commute via train to Penn Station in NYC everyday and the crowd in Venice was not as bad as a day at Penn Station with cancellations.

I can see their point though, you want these towns to keep they allure, not just be another tourist trap.

FlossieFlyer

I was in Cinque Terre last week. I caught the boat from La Spezia and visited most of the towns. The trail is still cut from Riomaggiore to Corniglia and will be until 2018 from the information provided.

As we only travelled on the boat and did not walk or go by train we did not have to buy a day pass for the national park. Most of the towns were crowded but still OK to get around in.

There was an altercation between a walker and a staff member on the boat, due to the lack of space on the top deck. The walker got on at Riomaggiore and of course upstairs was already full by then. They proceeded to sit on the railing and would not move when asked. Eventually they did move downstairs after a few rants.

Yahillwe

Unfortunately this is happening everywhere.

South of France is so bad that we don't even go there in the summer but either early spring or early fall.

Provence is the same. I went to Morocco, Marrakesh has become a tourist wasteland. Tangier is following.

There isn't a safe place anymore.

Fa Hz

I ran into this thread last year when i was thinking into going to Cinque Terre which I ended up doing, if anyone is reading this and considering to go, there is no restrictions whatsoever. Enjoy!

Perche

I think you just got lucky. When did you travel there?

Access is now managed. They even have devices on the streets to count the number of footsteps, so that they can stop access when it reaches an amount of stress that is too much for the region to sustain.

It is impossible for tourists and native citizens to co-exist when the number of tourists reached 2.5 million per year. I mean, the town of Manarola has a native population of less than 500 people. During Spring, Summer, and Fall, it is nothing but tourists.

Before Rick Steven put Cinque Terre in his books they were charming little isolated villages representing old Italy, accommodating 200,000 visitors per year, not 2.5 million. Now, it is as crowded and unromantic as visiting Disneyland, and just about as authentic.

Pictures of the beach at Monterosso, and the docking area at one of the towns, are below. It is super packed. You won't find much that is lovely on Via Dell' Amore. Residents of the village, with the exception of a few that struck it rich, refer to the Rick Steves book as the, "Incubo," or nightmare.

How can a family in a town of 500 send their six year old child to the market for milk when the narrow streets are as crowded as Wall Street during rush hour? This is follow-the-herd tourism. You can't live in a town where your child cannot play in the street during the summer because the street is shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists.

Cinque Terre had to stop this or die, and Venice is in the process of doing the same.

There is nothing unique about Cinque Terre anymore. It's become a theme park, where you need to make a reservation to get in, except during off-season. From March on, the residents cannot stand it, and most are moving out. The only ones who will remain will be trinket shop sellers, unless the restriction of tourists enables the old towns to thrive again.


http://www.travelquotidiano.com/inco...16/tqid-238290

Excerpts
Accessi limitati dall’estate 2016 (limited access starting summer of 2016
[ 0 ] 19 febbraio 2016 14:26

E’ necessario ridurre drasticamente il numero dei visitatori in una delle aree turistiche più belle della penisola sulla riviera ligure. (It's necessary to drastically reduce the number of tourists coming to the Riviera Ligure).

Questo angolo genuino delle bellezze italiche, dichiarato Patrimonio dell’Umanità dall’Unesco, riceve, ogni anno, oltre due milioni e mezzo di turisti, identificabili purtroppo in gruppi e croceristi, che invadono letteralmente i cinque splendidi borghi del parco naturale che si affaccia sul mar Ligure: (This beautiful corner of Italy, patrimony of humanity, is literally invaded by 2.5 million people who come to Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza e Monterosso al Mare by means of cruise ship.)

Uno dei temi più preoccupanti è la perdita di identità culturale e per questo e altri motivi, più pratici, le autorità dalla prossima estate limiteranno gli accessi ponendo come limite massimo il milione e mezzo di visitatori. (The preoccupying themes is that it will lose its identity and culture, and therefore the decision was to reduce the number of visitors from 2.5 million to 1.5 million.)

Una volta raggiunto il limite si chiuderanno gli accessi. (Once the limit is reached, access will be closed.) I biglietti d’entrata potranno essere acquistati in anticipo sul web e grazie ad una “app” in tempo reale si potrà controllare la situazione di “occupazione” di cadauno dei paesini. (You can buy tickets to get in ahead of time thanks to our web app.)
L’obiettivo finale è quello di preservare un angolo di mondo dove la pace e la tranquillità hanno sempre regnato sovrane. (Our goal is to preserve this corner of the world where piece and tranquility have always reigned supreme.)

MSPeconomist

When I was in Portofino years ago, this town on the end of a small peninsula was restricting access. They had a very limited number of parking places in the town, maybe a dozen on the main square plus a few additional spots along a couple streets in the center and along the port. Police were stationed at the access road (between Portofino and Santa Marguerita?) to only allow another nonresident car when one exited. It created a traffic jam that looked to be hours long. Fortunately I had a written confirmation from my hotel, so I was waved around all of the stopped cars and permitted to enter immediately. This would have been late spring IIRC, perhaps on a weekend.

GUWonder

Whether by air, sea or land, more affordable travel does have consequences.

Fortunately, I'm more of a late March to early May or early October to mid-November kind of traveler when it comes to a good chunk of my leisure trips. For those trying to do all this when schools are out, ouch.

I presume that if you have a hotel reservation in crowded places then you're going to get a pass of some sort. For example, when I have cars in Italy, I've found that useful to get car passes to park inside say Sirmione. Something like that helps to manage the amounts of some kind of traffic.

A lot of the older cities in Europe that have become almost exclusively dependent upon tourism really don't have much of anything else to keep them economically and socially vibrant. Without tourism, some such places would sort of just end up as sleepy places full of mostly old people, the underemployed and those with few to no good alternative options.

Fa Hz

Wow really? I was there in July 2016. I didn't see any signs of them restricting access and I certainly didn't have to have "tickets" of any kind to be in the towns.

Fa Hz

I googled this again, all I'm finding are the same reports from Feb 2016 stating the access would be now restricted but nothing new. So I wonder if this implemented later in the year.

KLouis

Last May my wife and I went to a Greek island that I'll call Innominata. After a week-long stay, we both found that is was on the top of our list list of nice Greek islands, which contains more than 30! When leaving, we told the owner of our "Rent a room" that we planned to come back this year. In a very serious way he told us that we'd be more than welcome, but we should make sure that we came before June or after August, as during the three summer months Innominata was packed with Italians who would leave no space for anybody else having constant and loud fights over mooring space for their boats. I guess the majority of them are people fleeing Italy because of the hordes of tourists...