Acropolis Will Limit Visitor Numbers as Europe Tackles a Tourist Crush

Greece will begin capping the variety of guests to the Acropolis, authorities officers stated, an effort to curb overcrowding at its hottest archaeological website amid wider worries concerning the influence of vacationers thronging European sights.

The cap of 20,000 guests a day might be examined starting Sept. 4, and comparable measures might be rolled out to different historic websites throughout the nation, in accordance with Greece’s tradition minister, Lina Mendoni. She stated the restrictions have been spurred by worries over potential injury to the location and the experiences of each workers members and guests.

“Obviously tourism is desirable for the country, for all of us,” Ms. Mendoni stated to Greek radio on Wednesday. “But we have to find a way of preventing overtourism from harming the monument.”

The restrictions on the traditional citadel above Athens come throughout a journey renaissance within the wake of the pandemic’s peak, with guests converging on European locations in the course of the season’s zenith in July and August, undeterred by excessive airfares and resort costs.

But that has introduced again considerations about potential injury to culturally vital monuments, and anger amongst native residents over noise and overcrowding. In response, officers in lots of locations have stepped up insurance policies to deal with fears that sights — and extra broadly, cities — may turn into irrevocably modified by overtourism.

“Destinations want to take more control over tourism and have tourism more on their terms,” stated Ko Koens, a professor of recent city tourism at Inholland University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam who has researched overtourism.

The Louvre in Paris, which attracted practically eight million guests final yr — lots of them jostling to catch a glimpse of the Mona Lisa — has already restricted admissions to 30,000 a day. About 80 % of vacationer exercise is concentrated in 20 % of France, in accordance with the federal government, which needs to assist steer guests away from blockbuster locations to lesser-known areas.

In Italy, some seashores in Sardinia have begun requiring folks to order entry slots on-line, whereas officers in Venice stated final yr that they’d introduce a reservation system and entry price for guests, a part of an try and curb numbers within the fragile lagoon metropolis. Some sights, just like the convent that homes da Vinci’s mural “The Last Supper,” have restricted bookings.

In the Netherlands, Amsterdam has launched a raft of measures geared toward deterring disruptive vacationers to its red-light district and stopping cruise ships from docking close to town heart.

Home to the Parthenon, the Acropolis had drawn as much as 23,000 guests every day, and customer numbers practically doubled within the first three months of this yr from a yr earlier. Beginning in September, entries might be break up up into hourly time slots in the course of the website’s opening occasions of 8 a.m. to eight p.m., lowering traces and bottlenecks throughout peak hours, Ms. Mendoni stated. Limits is not going to be positioned, nonetheless, on how lengthy guests spend on the Acropolis.

“In this way we will seek to protect the monument, which is our main concern, as well as the visitors’ experience,” she added.

“Tourist visitation on the whole just puts wear and tear on these places,” stated Professor Koens. Other historic websites, together with the Cambodian temple advanced of Angkor Wat, have additionally imposed customer limits out of worry of potential injury.

But Professor Koens identified that the Acropolis hilltop can maintain giant crowds of individuals, and the truth that officers have been imposing a restrict signaled the depth of the customer numbers. “We’ve now reached a stage where so many people are going now that even they are starting to be overrun.”

The Acropolis additionally needed to take into account the climate this summer season. During the warmth waves that seared Greece final month, officers restricted customer hours after some vacationers fainted within the scorching afternoon warmth, and staff on the website walked out over what they referred to as harmful working situations.

The query, Mr. Koens stated, that many in style locations have been now mulling: “How do we prevent the visitor experience from becoming so detrimental on the local experience that it stops having value?”

Aurelien Breeden contributed reporting from Marseille, France, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.