petapixel.com/2023/04/20/italian-town-fines-tourists-300-for-lingering-too-long-to-take-selfies/
I have not seen the actual text of the ban but I doubt that it matters. Some comments suggest that the ban is not limited to selfies.
April 23, 2023
15
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It doesn’t seem like it’s about ‘selfies” but more about lingering too long.
There is a MUCH simpler solution: STOP all the “tour buses and cruise ships” from coming. Oh, wait, that would mean the town earns…. LESS MONEY…. Hmmm. Ok, so let’s just make any tourist who comes here feel like cattle in the chute to slaughter. Yah, that’s a great idea.
Frankly, I hope that enough tourists are angry enough to complain to the city or tour companies such that the tour companies stop going there. Win. Win. The locals “get their town back”, there are fewer tourists, and everyone can take whatever images that they want.
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We have a timeshare in Portofino, so I know the place quite well.
I do not quite get this as Portofino is quite hard to get to by road. The traffic wardens restrict cars arriving to those with hotel bookings or remaining space in the small car parks. Tour buses are to big for the narrow winding road. But there is a bus service. There is a ferry service from Santa Margerita and Rapallo. It would be quite easy to limit arrivals.
The thing with Portofino is as in all overcrowded destinations, is, to get there very early in the morning at eight o clock at the latest. You will have the place to yourself.
Portofino does get crowded, but at least when I last went, not oppressively so, like the Cinque Terra, which have become a hell on earth during the holiday season.
We had part of our honeymoon in Riomaggiore, one of the Cinque Terre villages in May 1987. I have got pictures of a deserted main street with kids playing football. I saw the TV news last night and they showed Riomaggiore crowded beyond belief. Over-tourism has destroyed the quaint little fishing villages that people come to see.
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in Australia. all the little fishing towns have been ruined by city folk building missive mansions on the waterfront and destroyed what they moved there for in the first place. homes that were $1 mill 15 years ago are now $15 mil. society is so dumb.
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It's much the same in the UK, rich types from London hoover up cottages in pretty villages to use as second or third homes, immediately turning them from 1 or 2 bedroom to 3, 4 or 5 bedroom, in the process obliterating all the charm. Meanwhile, the young people who's ancestors go back several hundred years in said village and built most of those cottages, are completely priced out, so forced to move to a sh*t-hole new estate in the nearest town.
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Rich people ruin everything.
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While I don't necessarily disagree with the sentiment, it somehow hasn't stopped me from wanting to be "rich people"...
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I'd like to think it is self-absorbed and self-centered people, not rich people per se, ruin a lot of things in this world. 😒
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Yes, ultimately. TBF there are a few of those incomers who don't embark on a monster expansion programme, do make a genuine effort to join in what's left of the community, and generally contribute, but sadly they're in the minority.
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I remember back in the 1990s reading the Gerald Durrell auto-biographical novels set in a still pretty unspoilt Crete in the 1930s, and longing to do the same thing. It is a great shame the way these place's attraction is their own undoing.
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Agree....LOL! I want to be the one lottery winner who doesn't go bankrupt within 5 years.
The real estate issue is real. You hear about ski lift workers in Aspen living in old school busses, Bend Oregon has also priced the locals out. I drove up the coast of FL a few years ago and the former view of the ocean has become a view of McMansions. Rich people seem oblivious to how much the mess things up in so many ways. (Blanket statement of course)
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In '53 our family moved to Woolstone near Uffington, Berks.
In the middle of Uffington there was about a 10-acre common, just grass. Some years later, I visited Uffington - only to find the common crowded with houses and surrounded with a 10-ft wall. Grump!
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In Italy over-tourism is a far more recent phenomenon. Many places were still not overcrowded in the nineties. The cinque Terra is a prime example. Florence, Venice and Rome have always been quite busy, but now the disease is spreading to other places such as Verona, and the sleepy Mantua is starting off down that road too.
Fortunately, if you do a bit of digging, you will find gems like Sabbioneta, or the Tosco Emilian Apennines, where things are quiet and enjoyable. But even in the famous cities like Florence, a bit of research before your trip, will take you to sites where the barbaric hordes are absent. Piazza Michelangelo, is always packed out, but few bother to climb the steps up to the Romanesque masterpiece, San Miniato, five minutes away.
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i used to like taking pictures of people taking selfies, some of the results were hilarious
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That depends on the definition of “everyone”. But “everyone” is the core issue. So many places are loved to death.
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One from the heart!!
