A group of tourists in Venice were sent tumbling into the icy waters of the famous canal after flipping their gondola, The Guardian reported, citing local media. Videos shared on TikTok and Instagram show the group in the water after their gondola capsized near the St Mark’s Square area of the historic city. The group of Chinese tourists had reportedly ignored calls from their gondolier to sit down and continued to move about while taking photos of the iconic city. The gondolier was attempting a difficult manoeuvre while trying to steer the gondola under a bridge, and the move required all those on board to balance their weight evenly across the vessel. But they continued to shuffle around until it eventually capsized. The tourists eventually managed to exit the canal safely and were attended to at the nearby La Fenice theatre. Venice’s gondoliers’ association did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Venice’s gondoliers’ association has taken measures in recent years to reduce the capacity of their boats to accommodate “overweight” tourists, The Guardian reported. Venice’s canals have been plagued by overcrowding from rising tourist numbers. In recent years, tourists’ sometimes poor behaviour has been chronicled by the Instagram account Venezia Non è Disneyland (Venice Is Not Disneyland). In March, the mayor of Venice said he wanted to issue a tourist with a “certificate of stupidity” and “a lot of kicks” after he jumped from a three-storey building into a canal. The unique city built on a lagoon is 2.7 sq miles in size, but it hosted almost 13 million tourists in 2019, according to the Italian National Statistics Institute, per BBC News. From 2024, Venice, an extraordinary architectural masterpiece and a Unesco World Heritage site, will start charging day trippers five euros (US$5.39) during peak times to control mass tourism.
