Starting May 2015, tourists will be hit with a fine for pulling wheelie bags around Venice streets. (Danita Delimont/Getty)
If you’re traveling to Venice, Italy, you might consider packing that old-school suitcase of yours or maybe even stuffing everything in a backpack. Venetians are so fed up with tourists’ noise pollution in their picturesque town that the City Council has introduced a ban on rolling bags that create a ruckus on cobble stone streets and canal bridges.
Starting May 2015 anyone trundling through the streets with a wheelie suitcase will be slapped with a fine of 500 Euros.
Sound extreme? Well, consider the fact that some 20 million tourists visit Venice each year and then imagine the sound created by a tour group of some 50 Americans, all pulling wheelie bags, walking over a canal bridge. Suddenly, romance isn’t happening in the gondola right below and the love birds being serenaded by a gondolier can’t even hear his song.
Venice City Council released a statement about the new ban:
The rules respond to the needs of many residents who have complained to the authorities in recent years about serious discomfort in their homes linked to the movement of goods at times protected by legislation such as at night and in the early morning. There are also numerous worrying signs of deterioration and wear to paving stones and bridges previously unharmed for hundreds of years.
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