Goldsmith Tommaso Pestelli was evicted from his historic Florence workshop to make method for a luxurious resort, the umpteenth sufferer of a mass tourism critics say is ravaging the Italian metropolis.
Calls for pressing motion to guard the town centre, a Unesco web site, intensified final month after a museum director mentioned “hit and run” tourism had remodeled Florence right into a “prostitute”.
Some 1.5 million vacationers flocked to the town final summer time, up 6.6 % on the earlier yr, whereas an rising quantity of unbiased outlets and residential flats are being remodeled into quick meals retailers and vacation lets.
“We’ve been open since 1908. If you get rid of us, and many others like us, you are taking away half of the town’s spirit,” mentioned Pestelli, whose father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been goldsmiths earlier than him.
Pestelli, 55, managed to search out one other little workshop close by, however says many fellow artisans haven’t been so fortunate.
The common price of month-to-month residential rents leapt 42 % between 2016 and 2023, whereas the quantity of flats listed on Airbnb jumped from some 6,000 to just about 15,000, official figures present.
Even in February, vacationer queues snake across the block on the Duomo and throng round Michelangelo’s David.
With locals pressured out and conventional outlets disappearing, “Florence is changing into an empty field”, Pestelli mentioned.
Elena Bellini, 47, who sells work by native artists, mentioned the drop in the quantity of long-term residents was killing neighbourhoods and had result in extra crime, like tried break-ins.
“Florence is dying!” learn a discover in the window of a jewellers saying the town had been “bought” to massive enterprise.
Airbnb ban
The Tuscan capital is just not alone.
Venice and different high locations just like the Cinque Terre in northwest Italy have additionally seen locals pushed away by astronomical rents, overcrowded websites and limitless memento outlets.
While Venice is trialling a ticketing system, with day guests to be charged an entry payment in excessive seasons, Florence’s centre-left metropolis council has launched a marketing campaign to entice vacationers away from the centre.
“People are more and more searching for ‘experience-based itineraries’, so we’ve to advertise … different factors of historic, creative, naturalistic and gastronomic curiosity,” mentioned Deputy Mayor Alessia Bettini.
Visitors to surrounding villages, castles and abbeys had been up 4.5 % in January, whereas the quantity of hikers tackling the Path of the Gods throughout the Apennines to Bologna rose 22 % final yr.
The council has additionally tried to release properties for native individuals and forestall rents spiralling additional by banning new short-term non-public trip leases in the historic centre.
The measure, adopted in October, additionally consists of tax breaks for landlords in the event that they change again to odd leases.
‘Gone eternally’
Despite the ban, a dozen or so artisans are being evicted from workshops in a constructing close to the Ponte Vecchio, amid plans to rework it for tourism.
“The Florentine goldsmith custom is reasonably shortly falling to items,” mentioned Pestelli.
A couple of streets away, Gabriele Maselli, president of Florence’s Historical Businesses Association, paints a gold image body by hand, rows of brightly colored pots and powders lining the cabinets behind him.
A big crucifix stands propped towards one wall, whereas close by a restorer repairs the floor of a broken portray.
“People come to Florence for high quality issues, made painstakingly by hand,” mentioned 58-year-old Maselli.
“If a enterprise is pressured to shut although, it impacts the entire manufacturing chain. A complete world closes, gone eternally”. – AFP
