When tourism takes its toll

DPA

The lanes, squares and bridges of Venice are crammed with people — the Italian city’s hotels play host to 10 million people each year, and that’s not including the 14 million day-trippers. But Venice itself only has a population of 260,000 people.
Tourists come to experience the beautiful cobble-stoned streets, the waterways plied by gondolas, the romantic light. There’s also the pull of glamour — lots of movies are filmed here, and celebrities such as George and Amal Clooney have married here.
But the reality the city, famously built on more than 100 small islands, now faces is less pretty. The dredging of waterways to make them deeper and wider to allow cruise ships nearer has even led UNESCO to threaten to put the city on its endangered list. That’s because the water the huge ships displace when sailing through can damage the foundations of Venice’s old buildings.
Cruise ship passengers are not particularly popular either. “Venice doesn’t get anything out of them if they only come for a day to walk over the Piazza San Marco,” says Jan can der Borg, a professor of economics at the University Ca’Foscari.
“The number of visitors is too high — and there’s a lack of quality,” he says. Those who are genuinely interested in Venice and don’t just want a change from lying on the beach would be ready to submit to more organization, he thinks.
“We need a reservations system,” he says. Better incentives to come in the winter months would also be good, he says, in order to spread visitor numbers out over the year. The number of visitors and their behaviour is also beginning to annoy the locals.
Unknown Venetians recently stuck up posters on bins showing pigs wearing swimming costumes, dropping rubbish. The writing underneath read, “Stop. I am not welcome in Venice,” according to the Corriere del Veneto newspaper.
Some people even bathe in the city’s canals, or wander round in swimsuits as if Venice were a beach town, says van der Borg. Some camp on the Piazza San Marco at night, while others insist on touring the alleys with bicycles instead of walking, says tourism consultant Paola Mar.
“They just don’t understand that in Venice, with all its bridges and laneways, you can’t cycle,” she says. Fliers also recently appeared on the wall of the San Giovanni in Bragora church saying, “Tourists go away!!! you are destroying this area!” according to the Corriere del Veneto.
They were apparently the work of a salesman who lost his temper one day at the beginning of August. It was the week before Italy’s Ferragosto public holiday (August 15) and unusually bad weather had forced beach-goers to seek an alternative amusement.
The stream of tourists, which included Italians, forced the Ponte della Liberta, the bridge that connects Venice to the mainland, to be closed. “That was a one-off,” says van der Borg. Nevertheless, visitor numbers to Venice are still climbing, by around 25 per cent over the past ten years.
“[The issue] is more about combining the interests of the locals with those of the tourists,” says Mar. “But other cities have that problem too.” Last year, newly elected mayor Luigi Brugnaro proposed the possibility of limiting access to attractions such as the Piazza San Marco by forcing tourists to book in advance.
The idea of forcing people to buy tickets to enter the city has also regularly been suggested, though it remains controversial. “You have to think about young people, who don’t have so much money, as well,” says van der Borg.
The legal implications of such a move are also tricky. In June however the city did introduce new laws giving locals special access to the water taxis, so they at least don’t have to queue with the tourists.