POMPEII LIMITS DAILY VISITORS
15 November has been identified as D Day when authorities in the southern parts of Italy will introduce its limitation on the number of visitors per day.
As part of its efforts to protect the ancient site, authorities will limit the daily visitors to 20,000 per day.
A system will be introduced to produce personalised tickets bearing the name of each visitor.
During the busier summer period, visitors will also be given a designated time slot that they will have to stick with. The peak period has been identified as 1 April to 31 October.
During the summer, a record-breaking 4 million people visited the site near the city of Naples. On the busiest day, 36,000 visitors visited the site.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, a spokesperson for the Pompeii National Park said the idea is to reduce the anthropic pressure on the site.
“We are working on a series of projects to reduce the anthropic pressure on the site, which can be a risk both for people, for example in the event of an earthquake, and for the heritage, so unique and fragile.”
CNN reports that the site has long been a popular tourist attraction, but the sheer weight of numbers has caused increasing problems at the site as visitor numbers rose from under 2.7 million in 2014 to more than 3.9 million by 2019.
Image credit: Rick Steves Europe