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I won't argue about off topic issues, but I don't think mass tourism is killing any sights. Ignorance kills natural sights, over advertisement kills human creat

• js2 8y ago
  I stayed with my wife and two kids on Venice almost exactly four years ago this month. We avoided the busy spots during the day, and had Venice to ourselves at night. So even at places as busy as Venice, it's still possible to avoid crowds. We actually found Florence to be busy almost everywhere, even with lots of people still wandering around at night. The Uffizi was the one place that was impossible to enjoy, mostly because of the tour groups. I wish they would limit the number of people in any given room at a time. But, we wandered across to the Museo Galileo and had it to ourselves.
  • lozaning 8y ago
    I found Florence pretty miserable and dont get me started on the 'italian food' within a mile of the Coliseum in Rome. I had the good fortune to spend quite some time in Castiglion Fiorentino and found that much preferable.
  • IkmoIkmo 8y ago
    Yup, same experience in Florence. Beautiful city but just couldn't enjoy it. I saw half a dozen other Italian cities and had a great time, Florence was the worst experience and it had little to do with the city and everything to do with the guests. The one thing that bugs me about museum tours these days is that they all wear in-ear headphones connected to the guide. Which means whereas before you'd mostly have groups of 5 people with one guide, you now have groups of 20 people walking 20 meters behind one guide because distance isn't an issue. Some rooms become unbearable, it's like you take a super busy street market in Mumbai and hang up some paintings and expect people to enjoy the art while navigating through a flood of people. In a way it helps because you get fewer guides and possibly less shouting. You'd hope this makes things more quiet but it doesn't. It drops the costs of a guide for individuals to next to nothing due to the size of the groups, so you get massive groups and more groups. Having a few groups of two or three individuals standing around isn't an issue. But when it's a blob of 15-20 people, it's no longer possible to navigate through it or look through/past it, you have to go around and if they're infront of an art piece, you're mostly out of luck. As for the city, in many parts you hardly hear any Italian and if you do, it's someone in the tourist business trying to sell you something. I'm not necessarily complaining, I'm part of the problem haha. Just sharing my experience.
  • thedarkginger 8y ago
    It was actually crazy to me how dense the crowds were around San Marco and how, if we walked 10 minutes away, it felt like a small town. Does seem to support the article's hypothesis that people are really determined to collect the marquee experience and don't necessarily feel motivated to do much else.
• cr1895 8y ago
  >All Italy has to do is start load balancing tourists. This is the approach the city of Amsterdam is trying in order to alleviate the huge tourism pressure. I'm not sure how effective it has been. It has resulted in funny things like "Amsterdam Castle" or "Amsterdam Beach" in tourist promotions that have nothing to do with Amsterdam. But, if it spreads the load...
  • scatters 8y ago
    Taken to the logical extreme in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/DieTukkerfries/status/1053696689352118272 https://twitter.com/DieTukkerfries/status/105369668935211827...
  • ajcodez 8y ago
    If you already have tickets booked to Amsterdam I would recommend spending some time in Utrecht too. All of the canals and dutch charm, none of the red light district pub crawls.
    • Grangar 8y ago
      Utrecht is so much better than Amsterdam... That city has become a tourist playground at this point.
    • anotherhuman0 8y ago
      Oh no, don't draw attention to it! (said as a former 10 year Utrecht resident)
• coldtea 8y ago
  >Why Florence struggles with Duomo and Venice struggles in general? Because they're famous all over the world for things they're struggle with. Everyone know about floating city of Venice, and Florence's Cathedral. Those things are being romanticised for centuries. There's a reason they've been "romanticised for centuries", even when there was not a "lure tourists" motive: they are beautiful. (Not that 90% of the modern tourists could appreciate beauty in anything else than a superficial way, as something to photograph semi-bored to post to their social account, when what they really want is a burger and some shopping -- but I digress). Those other places, not so much. So, this "load balancing" can't work very well.
  • the_af 8y ago
    > Those other places, not so much Are you arguing those other, less known places are not beautiful? I can't agree with that. There are perfectly valid reasons why Florence and Venice are tourist bottlenecks: they are well known because they are historically important cities, featured in famous works of arts -- paintings, literature, etc -- all over the world. So of course I want to see Venice and cities like it: they have well deserved fame. But they are not the only or even the most beautiful cities, they are just the most well known (again, for valid reasons). The same reasoning can be applied to many "tourist bottlenecks": of course it's reasonable to want to see the Mona Lisa or visit the Eiffel Tower: they are world famous! You learned about them in school! But are they the best or the most beautiful? Nope. (For the record: I thought Venice was ugly. YMMV)
    • coldtea 8y ago
      >Are you arguing those other, less known places are not beautiful? I can't agree with that. Well, yes. Milan or Napoli or Brindisi or whatever, is no Florence or Venice or Rome. And there are nice cities like Verona that are nonetheless not in the league of the latter. You can find nice landscapes all around Italy, but if you want to visit cities, some are naturally more beautiful than others. Like how Santa Fe is nicer looking than Oklahoma City. >But they are not the only or even the most beautiful cities, they are just the most well known (again, for valid reasons). Well, they are the most well known for their beauty. Part of it is totally objective reasons: they were huge wealthy patrons of the arts (Florence) and capitals of naval empires (Venice), so they have more major works (architectural, etc) built than others.
• jlangenauer 8y ago
  Dubrovnik is one of the most awful places I've visited - literally everything is optimised purely to extract money from tourists. Want to walk around the city walls? That'll be €20! And if over-priced, mediocre restaurants are your thing, there's plenty of them too.
  • dsego 8y ago
    Split is becoming like that as well. Right now, almost all of the restaurants and bars in the center are closed until next season. It's all a big ruse.
    • randycupertino 8y ago
      Split seemed like a trashy euro nightclub scene for us. We much preferred Zadar, which was totally chill and reminded me of Key West with it's artsy, laid back vibe. Skradin was also amazing- I want to go back there with nothing to do for a month and decompress and write a book.
• CaptainZapp 8y ago
  One of the greatest cities in northern Italy is Torino. While medieval and in a certain shabby way as attractive as Firenze they only get a small percentage of the tourists.
  • TremendousJudge 8y ago
    Even in the city itself, the best renaissance sculpture museum imo is not the Academy where Michelangelo's David is, but the Bargello which not many people actually visit (the Academy is always super crowded)
  • paganel 8y ago
    I'd add Trieste to the list, an unique combination of Austro-Hungarian architecture and Italian feeling.
    • BadassFractal 8y ago
      Trieste is rather underrated. I agree it's an incredible spot, with barely any tourists, especially during the colder months.
• pradn 8y ago
  Famous tourist sites are not fungible. No matter how beautiful Torino is, people still want to visit Venice. It's partly the brand value and it's partly the real things that do exist there.
• tomp 8y ago
  Don't tell them!
• buboard 8y ago
  People go where other tourists go. Very few tourists actually care to have awkward interactions with locals or feel that they are intruding. People on holidays want to spend a pleasant time and not think a lot (despite what many travel guides say). In a massively tourist city, they feel comfortable and they dont stick out
  • alex__c 8y ago
    Wanting to spend a pleasant time doesn't seem to rhyme with people that end up in a two-hour queue in London or Milan. I do know people who genuinely want to have a nice, relaxing vacation. They book holidays at the beach, in warm countries, at 5* hotels. They don't bother much with overrated and crowded touristy places, really.
• hh3k0 8y ago
  > I won't argue about off topic issues, but I don't think mass tourism is killing any sights. One could argue that, by accounting for eight per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, tourism is killing the sights along with the planet.
  • CryptoPunk 8y ago
    You could say that about any economic activity. A greenhousing effect would also not be harmful to all or even most tourist sites. Your criticism just seems like a blanket criticism of human existence.
    • hh3k0 8y ago
      > You could say that about any economic activity. Any unnecessary and polluting economic activity that is actively killing the planet, yes. > A greenhousing effect would also not be harmful to all or even most tourist sites. I doubt that. If it won't be directly harmful in the next 100 years, there will be as many as 143 million people that'll be displaced due to climate change by 2050. Even if the tourist sites in question are in relatively safe locations such as Europe, you will most certainly not recognize them.
      • CryptoPunk 8y ago
        >>Any unnecessary and polluting economic activity that is actively killing the planet, yes. All economic activity pollutes, and therefore according to your logic, is "actively killing the planet". And if you want to be Spartan about it, a significant portion of economic activity is unnecessary, so your criticism is equally applicable to a major share of everything humans do. In reality people need more than the basic necessities, and will pursue more than them. You're not offering a reasonable way forward with your over-critical analysis that singles out tourism as a harmful activity because of a particular set of properties that it has, that are shared by numerous other activities.
• BadassFractal 8y ago
  I wonder how much of tourism is social prestige signaling. As in: "I've been to place X, have you been to place x?". It's sort of like going to TED conferences, it makes middle class people feel good about themselves and show prestige with their peers.
  • User23 8y ago
    You're selling yourself short. No need to wonder at observing the self-evident.