“We want to guarantee all visitors a quality experience, which should never be that of mass tourism,” the director of the Italian site Gabriel Zuchtriegel explained to AFP at the opening of the doors, citing reasons of “security, whether of visitors or staff, but also of protection of this unique heritage.” “Since the ticket is nominative, it is impossible to resell tickets purchased previously,” he adds.
The full price to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site is 22 euros. Once past the identity checks, tourists can wander in wonder between the amphitheater, the houses and the streets in an exceptional state of preservation, overlooked by Vesuvius, whose eruption buried the city in the year 79.
On this November morning, they enjoy the perfect calm to wander around the Roman ruins and are in no danger of exceeding the established limit.
On the other hand, when the high summer season returns, “for people who have already booked their plane tickets in advance and who are in a group or with a tour operator, it could be complicated,” anticipates Dominique Gilbert, a tourist from Nancy.
4 million visitors
Whether or not they are aware of the new regulations, visitors understand the importance of preserving the site.
“It’s a good idea,” says Jan Kubec from the Czech Republic. “Overtourism is a global problem and if there are too many people visiting a place, it might not be accessible for future generations.”
The site’s management has indicated that it wants to experiment with the measure after Pompeii, which welcomed more than 4 million visitors in 2023, experienced particularly high attendance days. Attendance could break a new record this year since between January and October Pompeii has already welcomed 3.84 million people, including 36,000 on a Sunday when entry was free.
4th world destination
The ceiling of 20,000 entries per day (15,000 in the morning and 5,000 in the afternoon from April 1 to October 31) could however be readjusted: “We have launched an internal project which provides for the opening of all the alleys, all the streets of Pompeii which are still closed in several districts”, explains Gabriel Zuchtriegel, who hopes in this way to better distribute the flow of visitors.
Added to the beauty of the buried city is the emotion of seeing the petrified bodies of the victims of the eruption.
The volcanic ash spewed out by Vesuvius nearly 2,000 years ago has settled on most of the monuments and dwellings, allowing them to be largely preserved. Pompeii covers an area of about 22 hectares, a third of which is still unexplored.
Tourist numbers have exploded worldwide following the Covid-19 pandemic, and other Italian tourist destinations have recently adopted measures to combat overtourism. Venice, for example, introduced an entrance fee for peak days in the spring.
Italy is the world’s fourth-largest tourist destination, welcoming 57.2 million foreign tourists last year, according to the World Tourism Organization. And many of them are concentrated in the same places, from Venice to Naples to Rome and Florence.