Save Florence from mass tourism! New campaign bids to reclaim city from its 16million visitors and monitor the damage they cause

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Around 16 million tourists visit Florence every year.

It's popularity is not surprising - the city contains over sixty per cent of the world's art heritage. But for its population of 350,000, that's an overwhelming figure.

So a new initiative set up by Prince Ottaviano de’Medici di Toscana, representative of the Historic House of the Medici, is aiming to reclaim the city, saving it from the ruins of mass tourism.

Around 16 million tourists visit Florence every year, visiting historical sights such as the Duomo, pictured here

The last ten years have seen a steep incline in the amount of visitors to the city. 

Vandals have destroyed historic monuments, an influx of fast-food outlets now line the major thoroughfares and binge-drinking tourists have been seen urinating in the streets and sleeping rough.

About 1.5 million cruise tourists arrive via bus from Livorno and La Spezia each year, staying in Florence for just a couple of hours, clogging the streets and adding little to the economy. 

And as large franchises move in, local shopkeepers and artisans have moved out. And as many as 100,000 native Florentines have left the city to escape traffic and high property prices.

Vandals have destroyed historic monuments, an influx of fast-food outets now line the major thoroughfares and binge-drinking tourists have been seen urinating in the streets and sleeping rough

Prince Ottaviano worries that Florence's cultural significance has been radically altered.

'There is an absolute lack of laws to protect the city from uncontrolled mass tourism and insufficient maintenance of buildings, monuments, urban spaces, and works of art,' he told the National Geographic.

'The situation became even worse to my eyes when I discovered that the police don’t have any agent—not even one!—who can certify the state of decay of building façades and require owners to make repairs.'

Snapping a selfie at the Duomo, left, and tourists at the fountain of Neptune, Piazza Della Signoria, right

Prince Ottaviano has proposed adding Florence, already a World Heritage City, to UNESCO's endangered list.

The Save Florence campaign aims to appeal to 'true travellers' rather than tourists blitzing the city in a couple of hours. Rather than mass tourism, the prince wants to attract visitors with its traditions of food and craft, its lesser known museums and smaller hotels.

And another Florence aficionado, tour operator Mark Gordon Smith, is aiming to bring the city's decline into public view, through a series of short video documentaries.

The Italy specialist is hoping to fund his project, to showcase Florence's hidden gems, the neighbourhoods tourists usually miss, as well as the damage being done by disrespecting visitors, via Kickstarter.

Tour operator Mark Gordon Smith wants to show the city's decline through a series of short documentaries

On his fundraising page, he says: 'The city of Florence Italy is in peril'. 

'The monuments and streets which lead from the Accademia through the Piazza Duomo to the Piazza della Signoria and the Uffizi are showing immeasurable damage; graffiti on historic monuments, visitors using the streets as a bathroom, people sleeping in the loggias of Santissima Annunziata and the Ospedale degli Innocenti.' 

He is hoping the short films will be distributed across the world to raise awareness.