Rome
CNN
—
The dream holiday in Rome could turn into more of a nightmare for anyone visiting Italy in the next few days. Around a major holiday, so many tourists are expected to visit the country’s most popular destinations that special measures are being taken to keep the number of tourists under control.
According to the Italian Ministry of Tourism, 13 million Italians will travel around the country around August 15 as the country celebrates together Sunday, an ancient holiday first introduced by the founder of the Roman Empire, Augustus, to give workers a rest, and the Catholic feast of the Assumption of Mary.
Add this number to the millions of tourists arriving from abroad and it’s a recipe for the chaos, bad behaviour and unfortunate accidents that regularly make headlines both in Italy and around the world.
For this reason, many places are turning to new rules and technologies to bring the chaos under control.
From the island of Sardinia to the heel of Puglia, access to many popular beaches is now only possible by booking through an app in an effort to control crowds. According to Italian media reports, plastic, smoking and in some cases even towels and chairs are banned on the sand for the next few days.
The use of stones to anchor umbrellas is prohibited on some beaches on the island of Sardinia, which has seen a record number of tourists this summer. The municipalities of Santa Teresa di Gallura and Sant’Antioco have announced that anyone who does not comply will be fined 500 euros ($550), local media reported.
In Sardinia, the mayor of the northeastern city of Olbia has banned nighttime swimming, beach camping, bonfires and even the use of chairs and towels overnight in an effort to curb late-night revelry – although a deadline to turn off music at 5 a.m. may seem too generous to some.
Elsewhere, the rules are stricter. In Sassari in northwest Sicily, the music must stop at two in the morning. In the holiday resorts of Platamona, Porto Ferro and Argentiera, according to a decree issued by the mayors of the islands, the music must stop at three in the morning.
In Rome, Florence and Venice, temporary traffic lights have been installed in areas with high pedestrian traffic as a crowd control measure to prevent people from taking selfies and blocking traffic flow.
On the Amalfi Coast, authorities will regulate the number of vehicles clogging the scenic roads by restricting entry to odd- and even-numbered license plates on certain smaller streets during rush hour, the local Campania tourist office said.
The island of Capri follows the tourist tax introduced in Venice earlier this year. During busy holiday weekends, arrivals are charged double the usual landing fee.
Some mountain regions in the northern Italian region of Trentino are currently monitoring the flow of hikers with surveillance cameras and want to close hiking trails that are too busy, the regional government said.
Augusto Sartori, the regional councilor for tourism, announced on Wednesday that hotel occupancy along the Mediterranean coast in northwest Liguria was now at 99 percent and the region was practically sold out for Ferragosto.
Even escaping to the sea is not a real option for those who have not booked in advance.
Italy’s cruise tourism is expecting over 65,000 passengers in Genoa, with six ships calling at twelve ports each in the two weeks before and after August 15. In Civitavecchia near Rome, around 59,000 cruise passengers are expected in the same period. In Naples, there will be 45,000 and in Bari, around 25,000 passengers will disembark.
Italy’s Tourism Minister Daniele Santache described the problem of overtourism as “blasphemy”, but stressed that Italy is in the process of getting the problem under control and is preparing for a further sharp increase in visitor numbers in the coming years.
“For me, overtourism is blasphemy. The problem is rather managing and regulating it the way we have been doing since we came to power,” she told the newspaper La Nazione in her hometown in Tuscany.
“We are also preparing the ground for future challenges, from Milan-Cortina (2026 Winter Olympics) to the Jubilee (a religious festival in Rome in 2025), which will be an opportunity to make lesser-known realities known, build diverse tourist offers and enhance our wonderful villages.”
Italy, like many other places in the world, struggles with the problem of overtourism during peak season, a problem that can negatively affect both the quality of life of people in popular holiday destinations and the quality of the holiday enjoyed by visitors.
This was probably not what Emperor Augustus had in mind when he chose the Midsummer Festival.
