Locals in the picturesque Austrian village of Hallstatt have staged a protest against mass tourism by blocking the main road to the town.
The lakeside village – which some say was the inspiration for Arendelle in Disney’s Frozen – has a population of just 800, but gets up to 10,000 visitors a day during high season.
On Sunday, locals blocked the main access tunnel to the village in a protest against overtourism.
The tunnel was closed for about 15 minutes, Austrian newspaper Salzburger Nachrichten reported.
About 100 people gathered for the protest, carrying placards with slogans such as “Now an emergency brake. Or we will be run over”; “Think of our children” and “Radical frontiers for mass tourism”.
The protesters wanted a cap on daily visitors and a 5pm curfew for tour buses.
Hallstatt is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has seen a boom in tourism in recent years. Before the pandemic it saw roughly a million visitors a year.
Read more:
People injured after P&O cruise ship ‘crashes’
Wales tourists could pay extra fee for overnight stays
Venice could be added to danger list after ‘insufficient’ measures to tackle mass tourism
Fed-up locals put up an “anti-selfie fence” earlier this year, blocking part of the mountain view to discourage tourists and the noise pollution they create. It was later taken down.
At the time, the mayor said he wanted to reduce the number of tour buses by a third.
Hallstatt was rumoured to be one of the inspirations for Arendelle from the Disney film Frozen
The popularity of Hallstatt was partly fuelled by a 2006 Korean TV series, Spring Waltz, which was shot there.
Six years later, a life-size replica of the village was opened in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
