Naples councillor demands tourist charge to stop overcrowding

A councillor in Naples has demanded the city introduce a Venice-style €5 charge for day trippers to help combat tourist numbers.

Gennaro Esposito, a centrist councillor who also heads an association of Neapolitan residents, called for an entry fee to be applied to the city’s historic centre, a Unesco heritage site encompassing baroque churches and early Christian catacombs.

Esposito said peaks of 80,000 daily tourists were clogging narrow streets and worsening the city’s infamous litter problem, while fuelling a rise in petty crime. “Locals cannot cross their own roads because they are blocked,” he said. “Rubbish bins are already overflowing by ten in the morning.”

• Venice entry tickets are not cutting tourism, critics say

Esposito’s proposal takes inspiration from a €5 ticket scheme for day trippers in Venice, which has been tested this year. The pilot raised an estimated €2.2 million, less than the €3 million invested by the city council, and critics claim it failed to reduce visitor numbers. The initiative will be extended to 54 days next year with an increased top fee of €10.

Esposito said the charge would be managed via a “digital platform” and should be applied during the busiest periods of the year, including Christmas, adding that the funds raised could be spent on waste disposal and policing services. He called for the measure to be introduced as early as next year.

It has already run into opposition, however. Mari Muscara, an independent councillor for the Campania region, dismissed the proposition as unenforceable. “Whoever wants to implement this measure does not know our city,” she said. “The council lacks a plan for combating over-tourism.”

Marco Ferrigno, a craftsman whose family business has made Neapolitan nativity scenes for 300 years, told the local news website NapoliToday that access to Via San Gregorio Armeno, a popular street for shopping in the heart of the city which is also home to many other nativity scene workshops, should not be restricted to visitors.

“San Gregorio Armeno is a place for all born from the love and passion of artisans, and it must remain for all,” he said.

Gaetano Manfredi, Naples’s left-wing mayor, said that a charge was “not the best solution” for the city.

Other tourist hotspots have floated alternative measures, with Sara Funaro, the mayor of Florence, recently calling for a rise in fees on coaches transporting tourists to the heart of the city and officials in Rome planning to introduce an access charge for the Trevi Fountain.

Permission for a tourist fee in Naples would first have to be approved by national politicians.

Muscara suggested that instead councillors should focus on tempting tourists away from particularly busy streets to the city’s many other cultural treasures. “We have Greek and Roman ruins that are virtually unknown,” she said. “Naples should not be a place where you turn up, eat a pizza and go home.”

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