As a Brit living in Venice, the tourist tax is the least of my problems
Last week I left sunny Naples, where I’d spent the weekend, and took the train home to Venice, where I’ve lived since 2020, working as a freelance journalist. I arrived to a typically Venetian welcome. The rain was battering down, gale-force winds ripped my coat open and the vaporetto (waterbus) to my stop was cancelled because of flooding. I got another vaporetto halfway, then walked the half-hour home, hoisting my suitcase over no fewer than five bridges with sewage-infused floodwater soaking my trainers.
That’s the thing about living in Venice, which introduced the world’s first day-tripper fee this week. Of course, it’s a permanent catwalk of beauty — my daily bins routine involves walking past a Palladio-designed church and flinging my bin bags into a boat moored on a chocolate-box canal.
Going to the supermarket means sailing through parts of the lagoon that tourists pay thousands to come and see. Popping out for a quick pre-work stroll is usually a circuit around St Mark’s Square and the Doge’s Palace. Nothing feels as extravagant as popping into the Biblioteca Marciana on my lunch break.
Most locals seem opposed to the new fee, a tax of €5 in effect from today until May 5 and on weekends until July 14. There is talk of the city becoming “Disneyfied” and concern about privacy (we must provide details of any visitors to the authorities, and could technically be tracked in and out of town).
The lagoon city is often crammed with tourists, a situation that some locals resent
Today there were protests by many residents. What people really want here is for the authorities to prioritise livability. Because however many millions of day-trippers end up paying the tax, the truth is that Venice has haemorrhaged residents because it is a tough place to live.
Everyday Venetian life is a grind, from the high supermarket prices — that pasta was in a lorry that was loaded onto a boat — to the fact that you can only really order furniture from Ikea, since every other company charges the moon on a stick to deliver to the lagoon. Amazon Prime is wooing me with a risible five-day delivery time.
Then there’s the extra time you have to build into everything. I am living proof that all perennially late people can change, all you need is a ferry timetable that operates every 20 minutes and taxis with a starting rate of €70. Nothing sharpens the mind — or the leaving-home routines — such as the threat of spending more on transport than you will on dinner.
People always say that getting lost in the alleys of Venice is the best way to see the city — but even if you live here, and know the rat runs, there’s uncertainty. Sometimes I’ll be running errands near St Mark’s Square and emerge from the bank to find the tide is shoe-height. The MOSE flood barriers, which block excessively high tides from entering the lagoon, may have largely halted acqua alta (last week’s flooding was because they didn’t raise the barriers) but even regular high tides flood the lower parts of this sinking city.
High tides throughout the year affect public transport too. If I’m catching a train, I leave two boats earlier than I need, in case I need to walk half the way. Two years ago I made the mistake of leaving for an early-morning train without checking the tide levels. Big mistake: the boat got halfway to the station and turned around because we couldn’t fit under a bridge. The conductor laughed — because he thought I was a tourist. When he realised I wasn’t he berated me for not checking the tide app.
Because there’s an extra level of toughness in Venice as a non-Venetian, especially if, like me, you look foreign. The local community has been eviscerated by mass tourism and an attendant housing crisis: numbers are down 70 per cent over 70 years. That is what Venetians really want: the mom-and-pop stores that were replaced by souvenir stalls, a crackdown on Airbnbs, and a jobs market that doesn’t revolve around tourism.
The situation as it is creates hostility towards outsiders — including those of us who live here. The bar nearest my flat still charges me tourist prices (locals pay about half in the less morally upright places). An elderly woman once punched me in the head on the vaporetto and screamed, “I hate tourists” when she decided my legs were in her way. I speak fluent Italian, but not Venetian — here, that’s the wrong way round.
Protesters demonstrate against the new “Venice Access Fee”
Not everyone is like that, of course — that day I got punched in the head I was consoled by a shop full of Venetians at Caputo, an electronics store near the Rialto, when I walked in crying. Luigina, the maternal lady who owns the cult everything-and-the-kitchen-sink store La Beppa, checks on my welfare every time I step inside.
When I moved to my flat, I went to a bar on my first night, exhausted, and asked where the nearest pizzeria was; a knight in shining armour instantly escorted me to his favourite. A fellow vaporetto commuter once saw me struggling with a heavy suitcase and insisted on carrying it for me up all 70 stairs to my flat.
Because what we often miss when we’re here on holiday is that Venice’s beauty isn’t just in its canals, or its churches, or its museums. It’s in the daily life: the greengrocers unloading their fruit and veg from the boat; the young studs racing around in their boats, music blaring, come summer; the self-effacing expertise with which an artisan will show you a hand-blown glass “pearl”, a beautifully bound book or a sheet of marbled paper. Venice is precarious, but it’s not yet a museum — or a theme park. Long may that continue.