Tourists wishing to visit the Italian city of Venice will have to pay a fee for the first time, as a trial aiming to disincentivize day trippers at peak times started on Thursday.
Day visitors will have to pay a €5 ($5.30) access fee between 8:30 am and 4 pm, unless exempt, on 29 trial days through July.
Residents of the Veneto region, people who work, study or were born in Venice and anyone who has booked accommodation in the city will be exempt from the requirement to buy a ticket.
Children under 14 will also be exempt. In some cases an exemption voucher is required.
Admission is paid for by obtaining a QR code and downloading it onto your mobile phone. Failure to pay the admission ticket could result in a fine of €50 to €300.
Overnight guests also need a QR code, but will receive one free of charge from the hotel or landlord. Initially, only random checks will be carried out. There is no upper limit that will result in the city being shut down to tourists. The revenue will later be used to renovate sewers, roads and buildings.
The trial will initially run until May 5 and then nearly every weekend until mid-July, for a total of 29 days this year.
A decision will then be made by the end of the year as to whether this will become a permanent arrangement and whether the fee should be raised.
The regulation came into force on Thursday because Italy has a public holiday to commemorate the end of the German occupation in 1945. Due to the public Labour Day holiday on May 1, many Italians are using the coming days for an extremely long weekend - a so-called super ponte (super bridge).
As a result, even more local visitors are expected in Venice in addition to the many guests from abroad.
According to the latest information from the city's administration, more than 80,000 people registered their presence in Venice on Thursday, but only around 7,000 of these had actually paid admission by Wednesday afternoon,.
All the others were locals, overnight guests or other visitors for whom there are exemptions.
The flow of visitors from all over the world brings a lot of money into the coffers of the tourist hotspot.
However, mass tourism has also been causing problems for Venice - one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world - for some time.
The historic centre, with the famous Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge and the many canals now has less than 50,000 permanent residents.
In the high season, there are more than twice as many tourists on some days.
Last year, it was estimated that around 15 million visitors travelled to the city.