Cinque Terre, Italy
Cinque Terre, the picturesque chain of five Italian villages on the coast of the Gulf of Genova, was being overrun by tourists. Cinque Terre saw roughly 2.5 million tourists per year, usually from cruise ships docking for day excursions. The villages saw overwhelming crowds in communities not designed to accommodate them. The streets are overcrowded, the paths eroding, and To combat the problems caused by being a popular tourist destination, Cinque Terre proposed only allowing 1.5 million visitors each year. Cruise ship passengers would have to buy tickets to the cliffside community ahead of time. Roads into the village would be fit with devices to count the number of people coming in to the community. Once the threshold is reached, the road would be closed off. While these plans didn’t play out, it shows the desperate measures of communities trying to protect their historic integrity by throttling tourist crowds.
