Rome’s mayor rules out ‘Venice-like’ entrance fee for tourists

ROME – Rome can best preserve the character of its 3,000-year-old city centre with measures like restricting short-term rentals, rather than by increasing taxes imposed on visitors, mayor Roberto Gualtieri said.“It would make no sense to introduce here an entry ticket to the city, like they did in Venice,” Gualtieri said in an interview with Bloomberg for the video podcast Quello che il potere non dice.The Eternal City, a destination since ancient times, has no plan to block access, the mayor said.Visitors want to experience the city as Romans do, and that requires ensuring historic centre isn’t hollowed out, and tourists have access local shops and restaurants instead of “fake” ones, he added.“Tourists will always come to Rome,” Gualtieri said. “There have always been tourists, and there always will be.”This past summer, Rome’s city assembly approved an update of rules covering urban development, a process that took nearly 20 years.Among the changes backed by Gualtieri were stronger protections for residential housing in the historic centre.Action is still needed to adopt new regulations that apply to short-term rentals.Venice has tested measures to control the number of tourists and day-trippers visiting the historic centre, including a €5 (S$7.13) access fee which was trialled this summer.According to Gualtieri, such a system is better suited to the water city because its size is smaller, and a large number of visitors don’t stay overnight, so they don’t pay room taxes.Florence and Bologna have also passed new regulations on short-term rentals, such as banning a change of use for non-residential properties in their respective historic centres.Waste to energyGualtieri, a former finance minister and a member of the Democratic Party, won election in 2021, pledging to address chronic overtourism and sluggish garbage collection.To many Romans’ surprise, he jump-started some projects that had eluded predecessors on the left and the right.A waste-to-energy plant is moving forward after years of resistance, and Catholic Jubilee and European Union recovery funds were used to promote urban regeneration.Gualtieri confirmed in the interview that the waste plan will become operational at the end of 2029.Among his remaining priorities is to discourage what he described as a hit-and-run tourism, in which visitors “simply consume and give nothing in return,” he said.According to a survey released in September by real estate company Brixa, Rome’s city centre has more than 122,000 beds available for overnight stays, compared with more than the 116,000 residents of the area.The research indicated that the trend of short-term lettings which has traditionally been confined to the historic centre is spreading to residential neighbourhoods on the outskirts of the city.“We cannot intervene on existing properties unless we are granted the power to do so,” Gualtieri said. “So we are equipping ourselves with tools to impose restrictions” on various kinds of properties.His goal is to keep Rome “a great, open city where people want to come back.”Better-quality tourism, focused on major cultural events that sometimes take place outside the historic centre, will spur a demand for real Roman experiences, Gualtieri maintains.Rome attracted a record number of tourists in 2025, according to data supplied by the city.Arrivals totalled 22.9 million, including 12 million from abroad. Overnight stays totalled 52.92 million, another all-time high.Gualtieri’s term will end in 2027, and he has been tipped as a possible candidate for a centre-left alliance in Italy’s general election in 2027.The mayor dismissed such an option during the interview, saying he will seek to run for a second mandate.There are many long-term projects in the city that he wants to oversee, he said.In 2027’s campaign, Gualtieri said he will be “a mayor, a candidate mayor, and hopefully a mayor again for the next five years.” BLOOMBERG