In top shape
THE GERMAN GYMNASIUM is one of london’s most curiously named restaurants, and now the country’s best-designed one too – so said the jury at the latest Restaurant & Bar Design Awards. The converted Victorian building by King’s Cross station was indeed a gym for London-based Germans in the 1860s (germangymnasium.com). See more winners at restaurantandbardesignawards.com.
PHOTOGRAPH: MARCUS PEEL
SOMETHING TO DECLARE:
It’s time to start capping visitor numbers at the world’s top tourist spots
On a rainy day in the Austrian Alps this summer, I decided to take a spontaneous break from hiking and drive two hours to see the castle of Neuschwanstein, across the border in Germany. I had visited more than 20 years before, and I remember it was busy even then. The difference in those two decades? China has started to travel. All tickets to the castle had sold out. My experience was a scenic but distant view from the grassy verge out of town where I left the car, then a meal in a Bavarian inn, where long tables of Chinese coach parties looked in bemusement at their set meal: hefty joints of pork and mounds of sauerkraut.
Neuschwanstein’s limit has been reached, but it’s not just enclosed sights under pressure: caps on visitor numbers are being discussed for Italy’s Cinque Terre coast and the Greek island of Santorini. I instinctively don’t like the idea of visitor caps – of slamming on the brakes just when travel starts to become a possibility for millions of people whose dreams of seeing far-off places were previously restricted. But now I don’t see a way round it.
Consider the Mona Lisa: there are bigger, more exciting artworks even in the same room in the Louvre in which it’s hung, but somehow this has become the world’s most famous painting. Let’s say the sum of people wanting to stand in front of Leonardo da Vinci’s leading lady grows by five per cent each year, and the number of genuine Mona Lisas in the world continues to hold steady at one, the gallery will eventually run out of solutions short of zooming visitors past the painting on a conveyor belt. We are not producing any more da Vincis or Santorinis – or, at least, the rate at which true travel icons are born is not catching up with the growth in the numbers wanting to stand in their presence. In the last 15 years, the number of international travellers from China alone has leapt from 5 million to 50 million.
So visitor caps are likely to become an ever more common part of the tourist experience, even for sights like the Cinque Terre where the idea of selling a fixed number of entry tickets each day would once have seemed ridiculous. By all means encourage travellers to seek out lesser-known spots, but be prepared for sights caught in the feedback loop of fame. I have already had my turn in front of the Mona Lisa, but I know if I go back to the Louvre, I will be tempted to see her again.
When locations bring in limits to visitor numbers, I would like to see it go something like this: a third of the places go to people who book well ahead. The advance-planners among us are thus rewarded. A third of tickets are sold at a premium, so all these wonderful sights get the resources they need for upkeep. And a third are held back to be given out by lottery so, with luck, the experience is not completely out of bounds to travellers without deep pockets or predictable diaries. I hope there will still be room for spur-of-themoment travel, even if I never get to see Neuschwanstein again.