Of course people want to come to Venice. In the case of the ticket, the earlier the better.
Maybe you remember that in April there was an international wave of publicity/curiosity/dread/disbelief at the announcement that the city government — after nine years of dithering — was ready to start a 29-day program that imposed what was vulgarly called an “entrance ticket” on visitors to the city. (The city, attempting elegance, called it a five-euro “contribution for access.”) To lessen the unpleasant connotations, the plan was termed “experimental,” which means that no matter what happened, everything would be fine. That being the nature of experiments. You want to see what happens.
Many, including your correspondent, were perplexed as to what this project was intended to accomplish. Theories abounded. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said it was to slow the flow of tourists that was swamping the city. I myself doubted it, because if five euros were a sufficient deterrent to a prospective day-tripper, that person should be spending those five euros on food and shelter instead of lollygagging around the most beautiful city in the world.
Definitely need to see Venice. What’s a measly five euros?
Also, the ticket was only required on weekends and holidays, from 8:00 AM – 4:30 PM. So the flow could easily shift to other days, and other times of day, too. Finally, there were so many exemptions almost nobody, it seemed, was going to have to pony up. Resident Venetians, Veneto citizens, anybody with a job here, tourists who overnight in hotels/apartments, temporary residents, children under 14, students, persons with disabilities, persons participating in a sports event, persons with medical appointments…You get the idea. My favorite: “Going to visit a friend.” You fill out the exemption request on the city’s website naming some Venetian you met once standing in line at the supermarket cash register, and you’re all set. Not saying it ever happened, I’m just saying it could.
The first day was April 25, a national holiday as well as the feast of the city’s patron saint. The hundreds of tourists arriving on big launches were met by stewards who checked their paid online tickets, or were prepared to sell the ticket on the spot. The jackets clearly stress their role in handling the “Contributo di accesso.”
Some more cynical people theorized that this was a cleverly mislabeled method for the city to make some money. Crass! The city denied this, of course, saying that the expenses of administering the program (and staff and other stuff) far outweighed any potential profit. I’m confused. Why is the city pretending to be so bashful about wanting money? We’re already completely accustomed to the tourist tax on overnight visitors. Why wouldn’t there be more fees popping up?
Interestingly, the whole scheme depended on the honor system, which seems like a shaky way either to limit traffic or make money. If you arrived at 7:30 and just walked into the city, there wasn’t a dangerously high probability of being stopped during the day by somebody in uniform asking to see your ticket. It could happen, but as I say, the odds were pretty much on your side.
Soak up all that beauty, there’s plenty to go around.
On the city’s side, however, was the fact that there was no limit to the number of visitors, so simply pull out a crisp crackling fiver and you were in.
100,000 tourists arrived on the first day, and 8,000 paid. I’m no good with numbers, but those didn’t seem to indicate much of a deterrent, much less a slot machine pouring out cash. If the system worked as planned, there should have been fewer visitors and therefore less income. How wrong I was.
Deterrent it clearly was not, and the term cash-flow took on exciting new meaning. The city had estimated that in the 29 days of “limited access” there would be 140,000 paying visitors providing 700,000 euros total income. Yet the numbers up to the last two days revealed that there had been 440,000 paying visitors.
And as for those mournful remarks about how much it cost the city to run the program? The earliest report says that 2.2 million euros came in, three times the projected sum.
Just throw money at Venice, there’s no such thing as too much.
So we are all left with a huge question mark hanging over our heads (“we” meaning those who care, which I do not). What was all that?
At the beginning, the mayor stated that the ticket was “the first step to a plan to regulate the access of day-visitors.” In another interview, he said that “Our objective has always been to put a brake on those who come to Venice just for the day.”
So now, faced with the realization that the five-euro ticket hadn’t slowed the traffic at all, but that in some weird way had actually accelerated the situation, what is the next logical step? Already mooted: Raise the price to ten euros! That’ll keep ’em at bay! Or if not, it’ll bring us cataracts of cash. Either way, the city wins!
The Serenissima is often represented as Justice (a/k/a “the blind goddess,” though the blindfold is optional). The off-balance scales in her left hand appear to be making it difficult for the lion also to see straight.
We know these little horrors all too well, from sports events to any other mass gathering. Temporary “porta-potties” are absolutely great when you’re desperate and there is nothing else. That’s about the only great thing about them. Here large numbers of the typical “chemical toilets” are being unloaded a few steps beyond the finish line of the annual Venice Marathon. They are there for the obvious needs of thousands of runners just minutes after they arrive. And yet, there are none conveniently placed for the spectators. That seems wrong to me, now that I think about it.But then again, useful as they are, it would deface the landscape to have them around all the time.What if there were a public toilet permanently available? One that wasn’t a pungent plastic box? I wasn’t asking myself that question when I was crossing the canal in front of the Arsenal a few weeks ago, but then I saw this kiosk beside the Naval Museum. What ho, I thought. Do I see the letters WC?I do indeed, and the red hints that it is being used. The experimental loo arrived on February 10, in the throes of Carnival, and installed most conveniently on the fondamenta along which many spectators heading to the show at the Arsenal were bound to be walking. That extra spritz or beer? Normally you would have had to plan ahead to deal with the result, because there are very few bars along the way (maybe you don’t know this yet, dear visitor, but you might soon). This seems very civilized. The kiosk will be here for two weeks, or till Feb. 24. Or perhaps Feb. 29. In any case, a very short time. Disclaimer: Hygien Venezia does not know me and I have no interest in being known by them. Just providing information here.
This is a simple tale composed of two parts. (A) What we need and (B) how hard it can be to obtain it because of (C) (my error, the tale has three parts) other people. To demonstrate I take the situation of the new experimental temporary chemical toilet (A) near the Arsenal and (C) the city of Venice, some city councillors of.
People need places to relieve themselves, we’ll start there. On the whole, visitors manage the situation by stopping at bars/cafe’s, buying something, and using the facilities. But sometimes bars/cafe’s are closed. Sometimes they are crowded. Sometimes the WC is mysteriously out of service. And sometimes the owners have to crack down on tourists who show up in groups of which one person buys a coffee and all the rest use the bathroom, as we call it in the US. Not made up. So one person is relieved, so to speak, and his or her nine friends have to start looking for a toilet somewhere else, or buy a coffee, which is clearly something they were hoping to avoid.
Impatient and drunk males at big gatherings at night have no problem at all: Find the nearest wall. Vertical structures exert an atavistic allure to men. Ladies, you’re on your own, as usual. But there are small side streets — I’m thinking of offshoots of Campo Santa Margherita — whose residents have been driven to install a gate to prevent revelers from using the street to resolve the situation.
Yes, this conveniently dark passageway was a public toilet, according to the public. Perfect, until the repulsed residents fought back with the gate.
At night these side streets seemed perfect for personal usage; I mean, nobody was using them to go anywhere. Except home, as it turned out. Dog poop is bad enough, but good grief, people. Note that there is a canal only a few steps farther along. Just, you know, saying.Before there were gates there were these, possibly the first attempt at a public deterrent. A closer look at the lower area where the walls meet gives an idea of why this construction was installed. Useful, but only up to a point. My theory is that anyone who was sufficiently far gone wouldn’t mind (or notice) his shoes getting wet. There are many of these around (I don’t know who thought them up, or paid for them).You might have thought that the little shrine (“capitello”) to Saint Anthony of Padua might have given the person in need the idea to find another corner. Evidently not.But why are we talking about deterrents? Let’s get back to options for aiding those in need. There used to be plenty of pissoirs in Venice, or vespasiani, in Italian. The etymology of the name is simple: The Roman emperor Vespasian placed a tax on urine collection because the liquid’s ammonia was necessary for several activities, such as leather tanning. The Venetian vespasians were usually near an osteria, places where wine consumption carried consequences. This wall near the church of San Sebastiano bears its scars proudly.Needs no explanation, it all seems pretty simple to me.The vestigial water pipe. Typically the wall here was covered by a marble slab (more resistant than brick, by far) down which a stream of water constantly ran, and out the drain.This is the little street leading to Lino’s family home (visible at the far end). The curve accommodated a vespasiano that was concealed by a slim wall open at both ends, hence no door, hence always available. Nobody thought anything of walking past its perfume a thousand times a day. Most osterias didn’t have their own toilets, so the public went in public. Unhappily for Lino’s oldest brother, his apartment was just above an osteria that did have a primitive toilet. Great for the customers, not great for the brother. He and his wife got used to it? Only up to a point. They kept the overlooking window closed. Especially in summer.A small street flanking the Lutheran church at the Campo Santi Apostoli. On the wall supporting the abandoned mattress there are signs of the vespasiano that was. Lino remembers it, so we’re not talking about ancient history.Maybe when you get bored with looking at palaces you could start looking for the remnants of these once-useful things. I mean the vespasiano, not the mattress. By the way, if people were cool with pissoirs all over town, what’s so bad about kiosks?I’m referring to kiosks that look like the one by Hygien Venezia down by the Arsenal. You notice it has been designed to be accessible to people in wheelchairs. (There’s also a ramp at the door.) Electricity is supplied by a battery maintained by solar panels.
But the choice is not kiosks or nothing. There are permanent public loos in Venice. But there aren’t very many, their hours vary WIDELY — 8:00 AM to 8:30 PM is rational, so is 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, but 11:00 AM to 4:30 PM or 10 AM – 7:30 PM is not. And they aren’t always open. The WC by the Piazza San Marco is scheduled to open at 9:30 AM, and when I passed by at a very reasonable 10:45 AM it was shut up tight. These hours undoubtedly reflect the convenience of the staff, and not the public. Or whether the Comune has paid the water bill?
In an attractive gesture of collaboration, the city has an app to guide you to the nearest public toilet. Perhaps it will be open, perhaps not, but at least you can say you found it.
A map of the not exactly numerous public toilets. I count ten here — none on the Giudecca, for unknown reasons, but the one at the cemetery is helpful. The ones strewn about the Maritime Zone are for the non-existent cruise passengers, so ignore them. But again — pardon my diatribe — there is no reason to publish such a cheerful and encouraging map if the public can’t be sure the loo will be open when it’s needed. The other day a friend of mine was in severe need on Sant’ Elena and both of the only two bars were closed. The doors of the so-cheerfully indicated city toilet were locked. This is not a happy memory. But as I say, it does look nice on the map.The public WC at the foot of the Accademia Bridge. This is what a self-respecting public toilet should look like. Its most impressive feature? It’s open.They’re doing work these days, heavy work with tools. I just hope you weren’t counting on using this facility. Zwingle’s Fifth Law: Do not count on things.A curious sub-class of public toilets are Those That Were (and I don’t mean vespasiani). This building on the northwest corner of Campo San Polo was a public loo until some not-distant time in the past. Lino remembers it well, and it had the advantage of being in an extremely busy point of the city. So it could have been highly useful. But as you see, the need for the sketchy Euronet cash machines was greater. Sorry, I shouldn’t say “sketchy.” But I can say this: Independent cash providers such as Travelex, Euronet, Moneybox, Your Cash, Cardpoint, and Cashzone have high fees, higher than a bank ATM. Example: 15 euros on a 200-euro withdrawal. There are probably ten times more Euronet ATM’s than public toilets in Venice now. Priorities!Back to the toilets. Once you know what this place used to be, you can easily make it out. Those high windows somehow give it away.
I decided to experiment and went looking for one of the city’s toilets last Saturday afternoon around 5:00 PM. I was near the Arsenal, and wondered where the large sign indicating a nearby loo might lead me. I didn’t need it, and what a good thing that turned out to be.
This very narrow and slightly ominous street is marked as the route to salvation. The Calle del Cagnoleto is right by the area on the Riva degli Schiavoni where the day-tripping tourist launches load and unload their passengers, so it would seem to be an ideal place for a rest stop, as we say in the US.Yes, that happy arrow up there points toward relief. Take heart and forge ahead!Wow. Well okay, on we go.The street passes in front of the green doors (I was walking from right to left). You are looking for what transit engineers call “confirming signs.” But instead of repeating the sign you are familiar with, there is only a rectangle of stone saying “Alle Docce” (you frantically check for translation and find “To the showers.” Showers? Who wants showers?). There used to be an arrow, but any help that might have provided is long gone.A few more steps onward and there is a small sign that gives you hope.And the street opens up and you discover you have reached the “Comune di Venezia Docce Pubbliche.” City of Venice Public Showers. We’re looking for WC and we get docce (DAW-cheh).Let us imagine that at this point I am now beginning to feel that this experience is less a trial run and more of a real run. Now what?The Public Showers also include, as one has been supposing, public toilets. The green arrow on the front door, on the left, has pointed toward the right, so the entrance is one of those two doors. But I’ll never know, because as you see, the place was closed up tighter than a can of tuna. Five o’clock on Saturday afternoon. It’s the end of the road, and your choice now, as there are no bars in sight, is to turn around and hope to find a Plan B before crisis strikes, or figure out how to use the canal a few steps away. As to the showers, they are maintained by the Diocese of Venice to accommodate anyone who is without that option, either temporarily or permanently, and clean clothes are also available. This is praiseworthy and I have nothing but respect for this service. But about the WC……But you can leave with the knowledge that, according to this very edifying sign, the areas that you cannot use at your moment of off-schedule need are paragons of ecologically sound cleanliness. I notice that hours are not even scribbled on a Post-It note. You know, it’s easy to inveigh against tourists, but I would recommend that one remember that tourists are also people. And this little five-minute exploration has not only disappointed and discouraged me but also seems ever so slightly insulting. “Fine, we’ll let you use our toilets, but only when it suits us.” Solution? There ought to be many, but the simplest would be the mere addition of the opening hours to the sign at the entrance to the street — the sign that lured me hopefully onward. That way, at least nobody with an important problem will waste precious time heading toward locked doors. I suggest this minimum concession if you’re not going to keep the facility open while the sun is still shining and there are plenty of tourists still around.
So to review: The options for needy travelers are: Resort to one of the numberless bars/cafes, when available either geographically or according to time of day; or public toilet, when available either geographically or according to time of day. Or wall. Or canal.
Let’s return to the kiosk. The Comune opened the public-toilet project for bids in 2019, with a budget of 5 million euros, and only one company submitted a proposal. Hygien Venezia was prepared to proceed, then the pandemic intervened. So now, three years later, the company has finally installed its creation for a two-week trial. Then all the reports and analyses and opinions and pros and cons will be thrown into a box and shaken (I’m making that up), and some decision will be made on installing the 20 more that the company is ready to place strategically around town.
Don’t assume that decision will inevitably be in the positive. This being Venice, some people have complained. From shops and hotels and other enterprises, some people have objected. The Nuova Venezia only referred to the protesters as “the categories.” What category? The Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners? (It exists, but not in Italy.)
Whatever the “categories” might be, eight city councilors have spoken up, expressing a desire to inquire of the mayor “on the basis of what information is it considered that Venice possessed the characteristics to manage the cleaning (removal of waste) of 28 chemical toilets.” It occurs to me that Hygien Venezia probably has foreseen the problem and the solution, and described the plan on the bid itself. I’ll bet that they will be able to provide answers as needed, without bothering the mayor.
Perhaps the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon has arrived in Venice. There may well be those who do not wish to see one of these kiosks near their homes or places of business. I will grant you that the general lack of space here means that there is a risk that a new structure, however modest, could make the immediate area even more crowded. However, there are also campos and fondamentas that can boast of space. But let’s not quibble. Essentially, there seems to be an innate propensity to assume something new won’t work rather than consider ways in which in might perhaps be configured to work.
There is bound to be space for one of these kiosks at Campo Santa Margherita without jostling anybody too far to the side.I’m going to ask the people who live here how they’d feel about having the kiosk in the campo.
In my view, this is another of the many situations in which Venice’s perplexity as to how to manage the city comes to the fore. Lots of real cities have public toilets in the streets. Paris comes to mind, obviously — if there’s a city with bars/cafe’s at every turn, that would be Paris, and yet there are 420 cubicles on the streets of the City of Light, used 3 million times a year. I grant that Parisian streets tend to be more spacious than your average calle. But the port of Piraeus has concise public toilets, as do Madrid, and Oslo, and Berlin, and so on. Or at the very least, reorganize the public toilets in Venice with rational hours and doors that can be opened.
“The categories” want tourists, and then people grumble at how demanding those tourists can be. It seems to me that Venice might occasionally consider dismounting from its high horse on certain issues. Give the horse a rest.
I neglected to include photos of another “ripple effect” of tourism: Most of the fruit and vegetable vendors at the Rialto Market are making ends meet by selling packages of dried pasta-sauce mix. These have somewhat replaced the formerly ubiquitous packages of colored pasta (aquamarine fusilli, etc.), but in any case are aimed at the same public.
No need to say more.
A typical stall at the Rialto Market; at least half the space is dedicated to the pasta-sauce packages. And, like the illegal handbags that once were omnipresent, the packages from stall to stall are exactly the same.Long tubes….… or flat packs, the contents don’t vary. But people like them. Is this a likely gift item for your friends back in Eek, Alaska?It’s like a colored tide has overwhelmed the market, with dried stuff and seasonings instead of algae.People must like them, otherwise there wouldn’t be so much. This was an unknown product until just the past few (three?) years. You could probably create a simple graph delineating the increase of these and tourists, and the decrease of everybody else. I guess you know that you could make virtually the same dish from scratch, and it would taste better. But the packages are indeed very colorful.
Empty Venice. It exists, but you have to get up really early to see it.
Another headline repeats what is becoming accepted wisdom: “Tourism is killing Venice, but it’s also the only key to survival.”
Apart from my inborn tendency to balk at the word “only” (in this case, is it true, or is tourism the only key you’ve come up with?), the phrase itself makes the same sense as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” “Arsenic can kill you, but it’s the only thing we have to treat your late-stage trypanosomiasis.” Why do I keep linking tourism to death? That’s not good.
The quantity of tourists, as so many things, can be measured as “enough,” “more than enough,” and “far too much.” Sometimes these estimates are subjective (“I personally can’t find a seat anymore at my favorite cafe’, therefore there are too many people here”) to the clearly objective, like those overloaded Asian ferries that sometimes sink.
This has not been Photoshopped; it was 6:00 AM on a May morning and it was divine, but only if you see this scene as empty of tourists. If you see it as empty of Venetians, not so much.
Venice’s plight is not unique. There are increasing numbers of places which are now under pressure from what once was a good thing, and they are trying different ways of managing it. Easter Island, if you’re interested, recently faced the fact that it was being subjected to a “veritable invasion of foreigners.” The 8,000 residents held a referendum and agreed to limit a tourist’s stay to 30 (as opposed to the previous 90) days, and soon will decide on a maximum number of tourists to allow at any one time, period.
Tourism to Iceland — a slightly less remote place — has increased five-fold since 2010. The population of Iceland is 332,000, and last year counted some 2,000,000 visitors. A tax is being discussed which would be applied in various ways to protect the spectacular natural environment from what amounts to six tourists for every resident.
Consider the gorgeous Croatian coastline. Rovinj, to take an example at random, has a population of 15,000; in 2017 there were 490,000 arrivals. Istria, the Croatian peninsula nearest to Italy, contains 208,000 residents; in 2017 there were 1,022,171 tourists from Germany alone.
Well, you say, when the shock has subsided, those are mostly summer destinations; obviously there’s breathing room there in the winter. And that’s true. But Venice is mostly a summer destination too.
Venice, so fragile, so small, obviously is facing its own perils, many based on chronic perplexity as to how to manage a place which has too many visitors to permit normal life, but which stubbornly insists on maintaining normal life anyway. Plans for peaceful coexistence that are hopefully suggested usually run aground on the reef of how to implement them. And there’s no way to ever make the city larger than three square miles.
One almost can’t recognize places that aren’t full of people.
Studies have shown that the sustainable limit of tourists to Venice is 19,000,000 a year. Last year 28,000,000 came, which is almost 50 percent more than the limit. The above study calculates that therefore Venice can sustain 52,000 tourists per day. We now have 77,000 per day. My own personal studies confirm that they will all be on the #1 vaporetto heading uptown on Sunday afternoon.
Speaking of vaporettos, they’re not your only option if you want to be crushed. Now the buses to Mestre in the late afternoon are reaching critical mass. So many tourists are packing the buses heading back to their much-less-expensive hotels, apartments, campgrounds, or wherever they’re staying on the mainland, that daily commuters literally can’t get on.
And if this is happening now, let me draw your attention to the several enormous hotels being built right next to the Mestre train station. Presumably their guests are going to want to go to Venice sometime, and even come back from Venice, on the already insufficient buses and probably soon-to-be-insufficient trains. Anybody is welcome to defend tourism, but I urge you once again not to say “Oh, but Venice lives on tourism” to any of the exhausted Venetians trying to get home as they watch the bus pull away without them.
The city government is struggling to find solutions to all this; it’s not like they don’t see what’s going on. The mayor recently announced that in the busiest periods he might close certain sections of the city to further entry. Something like this was tried a few months ago with “gates” at critical points, such as the Calatrava Bridge and the entrance to the Lista di Spagna, which were to slow, and redirect, the flood of arrivals heading toward San Marco from Piazzale Roma and the train station. It got mixed reviews and now the gates have been removed, though New Year’s Eve and Carnival desperation may require them to be reinstated.
Every time the topic of some form of entry tickets is raised, a thousand objections are heard. Entry is certainly easier to control at Easter Island, which is reachable only by means of a five-hour flight from Chile, but there must be at least 20 ways to get to Venice if you really want to, including, but not limited to, swimming.
I suppose winter could be considered one method of crowd control.
Managing crowds is an art and a science; the most striking example I know of is the reorganization of traffic in Mecca during the seven days of the annual hajj. Venice hasn’t reached the point where individuals are being trampled to death, but that was already a danger for the 2,000,000 Muslim pilgrims all trying to get to the same places together. A system has now been created to manage the flow better, so now we know it’s possible. It’s a fascinating story; here is a link to an interesting article on this amazing feat.
The lions awaiting the daily surge.
But “too many tourists” isn’t just numbers, it’s the ripple effect they have on Venetian life. I have recently noticed three effects of escalating tourism that are profound, even if not immediately perceived as such.
The first effect is the astonishing recent increase in supermarkets. A supermarket used to be a novelty, now it seems to have become a human right. There are even two, virtually side by side, on the Riva del Carbon near the Rialto Bridge.
I thought it would be interesting to find a map, or a list of the total number of supermarkets, but I didn’t and I don’t really care. They’re everywhere now. There’s the De Spar at the ex-Cinema Italia and literally two steps away is a Coop. Not literally ten steps away is a Conad, which used to be a Billa. Prix has inserted itself into all sorts of interesting corners, making it a challenge to find some of them although the lower prices make the search worthwhile, and there is a chain called Simply and something called Crai and so on.
If one knows — which one does — that the population of Venice is inexorably shrinking by about 1,500 people per year (despite a recent light touch on the brakes), it’s obvious that all these supermarkets haven’t been opening to support the few remaining locals. But when you consider the extreme increase of apartments being rented to tourists, voila’! I get it!
It’s clear that the dwindling population, including me, benefits from the supermarkets too. My point is merely that there wouldn’t be this number of emporia if locals were their only customers. Even I can understand that. But as I stand in line at the drastically expanded Coop on via Garibaldi it’s obvious that more than half of the people with me are tourists. And as I dodge their backpacks (yep, still on their backs, just like on the vaporetto) as they navigate the narrow aisles, I ask myself where the Sam Hill they all came from. I don’t mean what countries, I mean why are they all here now when five years ago there were so few? It’s like there’s a factory somewhere on a dark side street that’s manufacturing tourists.
There are many, subtle, and increasing ways in which the rise in tourism can be seen. In this case the butcher, who usually writes his notes in either Italian or Venetian, has added a word of English. It can’t be there for the locals.
The second effect is the astronomical increase in apartments for short-term tourist rentals. By now this is not a new theme, but as I have often observed, you can hate AirBnb all you want (and it is far from the only outfit in this business), but if apartments are constantly being added to the supply available to tourists (and tourists respond by renting them, of course), why are these apartments being offered? To make money, naturally. And who is offering them? The Venetian landlords, naturally. While everyone is excoriating tourists for killing Venice, one should recognize who is handing them the ammunition. The shots, so to speak, are coming from inside the house.
One starts with the fact that there is very little space for locals to rent. The available space, which is increasing, is now primarily offered only to tourists. Some years ago, when Lino and I were requested to vacate the apartment we had rented for ten years, the landlady said she needed it for her cousin, or somebody, moving to Venice from Sicily, or somewhere. Any excuse will do, because of course she planned to rent it to students, which she did, demanding four times the rent we paid. Not made up.
But let that go. When we went looking for another rental somewhere — we weren’t fussy — no agency would talk to us because Lino’s Venetian (hence, theoretically impossible to dislodge). My being a foreigner was fine, as far as that went, but the point is that we weren’t in a position to pay the tourist-rental rates of — I think one agent said — 1,000 euros per week.
We managed, in the end, to buy our little hovel (we gave up on the rental idea), but we could manage. Yet there are extremely aged Venetians (a retired 90-year-old professor, in one case) who are being summarily evicted by their landlords because the apartment, which has now become a four-wall gold mine, is wanted for tourist rentals. The landlord says “I want my apartment back,” and a person who has been living in the place for 50 or 60 years is out on the street. There is no recourse. I am not making any of this up. A friend of mine told me a similar story of an elderly person in her building, “And the landlord is renting two other apartments already.”
This often-tragic upheaval is a clear response to the sheer quantity of tourists, but fingers in the press are pointed at the tourists. Why? As Lino puts it: “Who is forcing the Venetians to leave? The Venetians!” Therefore, if you look around and all you see is tourists, there are reasons.
A group called Occupy Venice has come forth with the goal of re-appropriating empty apartments (that is, those whose fate has not yet been sealed by tourism). A friend has sent an article which you can peruse.
This lady is definitely not from around here. There’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing — in fact, I envy her — but her non-local characteristics are (A) being alone and (B) reading a book. I wouldn’t say that being outside is unusual; people here certainly enjoy hanging around outdoors, but they’re virtually always with friends, and that precludes book-reading. If they manage the Gazzettino it’s already something; taking time to savor “The Polish Bandit; Or, Who Is My Bride?,” or whatever she’s reading, is a foreign custom.On the other hand, while it’s possible that a tourist might wash sheets, it’s impossible to imagine that he or she would take the time to wash curtains and a collection of fabulous doilies. I’m putting my money on a Venetian here.
The third sign of increased tourism may not matter to anybody but me, so you can skip the next few paragraphs if you want.
I saw it on the day of the Regata Storica. This event focuses on four races which gloriously but inconveniently occupy the Bacino of San Marco and the Grand Canal for a total of three hours in the afternoon. This deranges the vaporetto routes, of course, and this year it was decided (one always wonders by whom) that this derangement was no longer acceptable. Therefore, for the first time in at least 100 years, the traditional “boa” in front of the train station was moved further downstream to just before the Cannaregio Canal.
“So what?” you ask. The “boa” is a temporary object which the racers turn around in order to head back down the Grand Canal toward the finish line. Tradition has always placed it in front of the train station, where there’s plenty of room for the boats to maneuver and plenty of room on the piazza in front of the station from which tourists can watch this usually dramatic moment. Win-win for everybody?
Of course not, because now there are enough tourists (or even some locals, I guess) who don’t care about the races and who are inconvenienced by not having vaporetto service from Piazzale Roma up the Cannaregio Canal during those few hours. One might regard the Regata Storica as the city’s festival, but no longer does the entire city celebrate.
Therefore moving the boa enabled the vaporettos to continue to navigate the upper reaches of the Grand Canal, unhindered by those pesky races. So another intangible, but no less real or important, piece of Venetian life has just been distorted (I didn’t want to say “eliminated,” but eliminated) for the benefit of I actually do not know whom. Because for many decades this temporary interruption of service didn’t create insurmountable problems for anyone. Does this change mean that now the number of “anyone” has superseded the number of those who want to see the Regata? Evidently yes.
The newspaper chronicles the craziness of the tourists, but crazier things keep happening below the proverbial radar. As in the case of the Fondaco, it’s the people in offices who actually have the destiny of the city in hand, and it will be a cold day in the Inferno when any regular Venetians might be consulted on the matter. But why consult them? Before long they’re all going to be dead. So bring on the tourists!
We need to move out of this dark tunnel now; I have a happy story to tell you.
Summer dawn. What more can one say?
A few days ago Lino and I were on the vaporetto going down the Grand Canal; it was late afternoon, that delectable moment in which you feel the heat of the day almost imperceptibly begin to subside and the faintest zephyr of coolness sweep over your sticky skin.
There were seats along each side of the boat’s bow, and everybody wants to sit there, of course: the view, the breeze, the general feeling of being the figurehead of the ship. The four forward-most seats on our side were occupied by a family, with the boy and his father on the left, the girl and her mother on the right. They weren’t talking much, mostly just relaxing and looking at the incomparable panorama as we trundled along. Tourists, of course, but calm, coherent tourists, acting like normal people.
As we passed the Customs House Point, where the Bacino of San Marco opens up to splendor on every side, the man reached across and touched his wife. She looked back and took his outstretched hand, and they silently squeezed, and smiled, gazing out at the glory.
Watching this, everything fell back into perspective and I was suddenly glad they were here. They weren’t just another four tourists, they were people who saw the beauty, and they were happy. It seemed that so many thoughts and emotions were being exchanged in that instant and I unexpectedly could imagine myself in their place, and I remembered how Venice made me feel the first time I came here, and I wanted that for everybody.
If all those too-many people who came to Venice could feel what they felt, then maybe we could find another word for them and stop calling them TOURISTS.
The Comune opened the public-toilet project for bids in 2019, with a budget of 5 million euros, and only one company submitted a proposal. Hygien Venezia was prepared to proceed, then the pandemic intervened. So now, three years later, the company has finally installed its creation for a two-week trial. Then all the reports and analyses and opinions and pros and cons will be thrown into a box and shaken (I’m making that up), and some decision will be made on installing the 20 more that the company is ready to place strategically around town.
