July 8, 2024 – 2:10 PM
Tourists visit a viewpoint under the ancient ruins of the Acropolis in the hot weather in Athens, Greece on June 13, 2024. – Photo: Nicholas Koukoufilis / NurPhoto / AFP
One of the world's most visited tourist attractions, the Athenian Acropolis, offers private visits for 5,000 euros, or nearly 2 million Hungarian forints. AFP reportsGroups of up to five people can visit Greece's most visited monuments outside regular opening hours, on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, from 7am or 8pm, with or without a guide. For comparison: a regular ticket costs 20 euros, a combined ticket valid for other attractions costs 30 euros, or about 12,000 HUF at the current exchange rate.
The first private tour was attended last Saturday by a Russian couple with their own guide. When the new type of tour of the Acropolis was first announced, it caused a stir. Until then, the union representing the World Heritage Site’s guardians had opposed the program, mainly because private guides would bypass official tour guides. According to the union’s president, “there is no known information about how these visits will be organized.” He added that they are aware that there is a financial need behind the measure, which can be solved in another way.
Greece's center-right government is often criticized for offering more and more private tours of the country's museums and archaeological sites, with these tours bringing in more than 120 million euros to state coffers in 2022, AFP wrote.
Last year, the Acropolis received a record four million visitors, a 31 percent increase compared to the previous year: this means that up to 23,000 visitors visited the Athenian monument every day during the summer. In order to reduce crowding and overcrowding, the number of visitors to the Acropolis has been limited since last September: thus, a maximum of 20,000 people per day, divided into time slots, can visit the monument.
Recently, mass tourism has caused more discontent in Europe’s famous big cities: a few days ago, for example, several thousand people protested in Barcelona against mass tourism that makes the city “unlivable.” Other major tourist destinations, such as Venice and Amsterdam, are implementing increasingly strict regulations to keep tourist crowds under control.
