Italian city Florence bans key boxes and tour guide loudspeakers to tackle overtourism

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN

Rome (CNN) — The historic Italian city of Florence is taking steps to cut overtourism, introducing measures including a ban on key boxes used by short-term rental landlords and tour guide loudspeakers, amid complaints that a surge in visitors has become unsustainable.

With stunning Renaissance art and architecture, Florence, in Tuscany, has long been popular with travelers. But, like many other places in Italy and elsewhere, it has seen a drastic increase in tourists in recent years, leading to a backlash from residents priced out of their homes.

This week, as the city prepares to host tourism ministers from the G7 group of the world’s most advanced economies, authorities approved a 10-point plan to tackle the problem, introduced by mayor Sarah Funaro.

In the firing line are the key boxes — combination-protected lock boxes used by short-let landlords to facilitate easy check-ins for guests — which will be restricted in the city’s UNESCO-listed center, known for masterpieces by Botticelli, Michelangelo, Giotto and Brunelleschi.

Lately, these boxes have been targeted for vandalism, with frustrated locals taping them closed with red Xs.

Limits are to be placed on “atypical vehicles” like golf carts which have become increasingly popular for tour guides to take visitors around the city in areas where car traffic is restricted. The decree also bans the use of amplifiers and loudspeakers for tour guides.

Tourists behaving badly

The measures are meant to make the Tuscan capital a “living and unique city” for both visitors and residents, a statement from the city’s council says.

Florence’s council said that the restrictions are driven by an influx of tourism which has become unsustainable for the residents who permanently reside there. It says more than 7.8 million people have visited Florence in the first nine months of 2024.

“The city is no longer able to support, without weakening its heritage value and seeing its overall livability compromised, such a massive presence of activities and means for exclusive tourist use concentrated in just five square kilometers (about 2 square miles),” the city council said in the statement.

Florence endured numerous recent incidents of tourists behaving badly. This summer a female tourist was filmed mimicking a sex act on the statue of Bacchus. In January, the head of the Galleria dell’Accademia museum called the city a “prostitute” that had succumbed to overtourism. “Once a city becomes a prostitute, it is difficult for it to become a virgin again,” Cecilie Hollberg said.

Florence is the latest of several destinations to implement restrictions on mass tourism. Last week, the archaeological site of Pompeii announced it would be capping daily visitors at 20,000 and requiring personalized tickets.

Venice also announced it would be again charging an entrance fee in 2025 during busy tourism peaks, and in Rome, the Trevi Fountain will be restricting visitor access to the fountain after renovation work is complete in December, the mayor of Rome told CNN.

Italy’s Tourism Minister Daniela Santanche, who will be hosting the G7 summit which runs this week, has argued that instead of curbing tourism numbers, the country should be adding up to 50 million visitors a year.

She has suggested that overtourism in Italy is a product of mismanagement.

“I cannot agree with this word, overtourism, however, I understand that we have territories where there are too many people,” she said during a tourism summit last week ahead of the G7.

“But the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Haven’t we destroyed the commerce that made our historic centers come alive for the communities in those areas as well? If instead of opening convenience stores we had kept our stores and encouraged our excellences, maybe we would have less ’eat and run’ tourism, which is what gives us little. It’s an economic law: to help the bottom you have to grow the top.”

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