Tickets and tour times, please. Since this Monday, the tourists who throng to visit the Acropolis of Athens must book a visit time and no longer hold a simple ticket valid for the day.
In order to limit the number of tourists per day to a maximum of 20,000, the archaeological site has thus implemented new rules on his site ticket reservation. “Thank you for your contribution to the protection and sustainability of Greece’s cultural heritage,” reads the monument’s page.
Up to 23,000 tourists per day
According to the terms specified, slots are opened at regular intervals in order to distribute the visitors over the day. The site is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in high season, but half of the visitors have come so far between 8 a.m. and noon, explained in early August the Minister of Greek Culture, Lina Mendoni, quoted by CNN.
“This generates unpleasant visiting conditions for the website, visitors and staff trying to accommodate this large number of people,” she said. Before the introduction of this gauge, she estimated the daily number of visitors at 23,000, a “huge figure”. “Tourism is obviously desirable for the country and for all of us, but we have to find how to make overtourism does not harm the monument “, she explained.
The system is currently in the test phase and should be definitively generalized from April 1, 2024, at the dawn of the next high tourist season. At this time, the gauge and the hourly reservation will be criteria also applied to the other monuments of Athens and Greece that tourists are very numerous to visit.