Venice (dpa)
The Italian city of Venice has raised more than €2.4 million ($2.6 million) with the first admission charge for day visitors.
A total of 485,000 paying visitors were registered on the 29 days of the test phase, according to the first official results published by the city administration on Friday.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced that a charge would also be levied on certain days next year. He did not comment on the amount or any other details.
The world's first test of this kind in a city suffering from the effects of mass tourism ended last weekend. It is already known that from next year, visitors will have to pay up to €10 if the city on the Italian Adriatic with its many canals is particularly crowded.
However, the "basic rate" is to be lower - possibly €3. There are no reliable estimates of how many tourists have managed to avoid paying the fee.
In the first test phase, admission was generally charged at €5 between 8:30 am and 4 pm, mostly at weekends. You could get a QR code online and download it to your mobile phone. Failure to do so could have resulted in a fine of up to €300, but nobody actually had to pay that much.
There were also a whole series of exceptions, for locals, hotel guests and children under the age of 14, for example, who did not have to pay anything.