Put Off by Venice's Crowds? Try the Oasis Next Door.

'Should tourism be limited in overcrowded European cities? The author ponders the issue as he explores Treviso, Venice’s quieter neighbor, where canals also flow.

The website of the city of Venice provides high water advisories to help people avoid flooded areas. Now it also forecasts another kind of flood: tourist inundations. It uses a scale of 1 to 20 stick figures, the kind found on the doors of men’s bathrooms. A recent April day could have been worse: 15 men’s-room men. Still, the city felt crowded, pungent, a little sticky. I boarded a train, eager to breathe in a gulp of fresh, authentic Italian air. I went to Treviso.

Treviso? For those who have actually heard of Treviso, the question is probably still — Treviso? Who in their right mind would willingly abandon Venice, home to a mind-boggling maze of architectural, artistic and historical treasures for a mostly overlooked destination best known for crimson radicchio, bright Benetton sweaters and The Fountain of the Boobs: a statue of a topless woman squeezing two arcs of drinking water — and on holidays, wine — from an ample bosom. And it’s not even the original.

But in one critical respect, Treviso’s scantiness is its salvation, just as Venice’s abundance is its ruin.

Venice has become arguably the European capital of overtourism, an inelegant neologism describing the hoards of tourists who have laid waste to the neighborhoods and character of some of the European continent’s most cherished cities.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/travel/venice-treviso-overtourism.html?