I last visited Venice in 1999. I have beautiful memories of losing myself in the ancient alleyways alongside the canals, browsing quaint Venetian glass and paper shops in the shadow of gorgeous, water-bound mansions and drinking the perfect espresso while watching the crowds in St Mark’s Square.
Well in the intervening 14 years, it seems those crowds got a whole lot bigger. The cruise ship industry has exploded there and today up to 20,000 tourists disgorge from the ships every day.
There’s been an increase of 400 per cent in the last five years alone. The Giudecca Canal has been dredged to deliver this payload to the heart of this Italian dream of a city. And it’s poisoning it.
Venice has always been a bustling town of merchants, visitors and inhabitants; that’s part of its charm. But it is simply not a city that can cope with such an excess of visitors every day.
The flood of bodies is even more of a threat than the water the city was built over. They overwhelm all of the major sights, ruining the experience for everyone (including themselves). They clog the already busy streets. They swamp the historic views with noise and chaos.
And they don’t even spend enough money to offset the inconvenience they cause. Most people eat on the boat because it’s all-inclusive and they tend not to splash out on the more expensive souvenirs hand-made by Italians, but rather hoover up the Chinese junk.
The flood of bodies is even more of a threat than the water the city was built over
Even the Venetians, who should benefit from a gigantic influx of daily tourists, don’t want them. The population of the city has declined by more than 50 per cent in the last decade as quality life has fallen steeply for those who dwell there. No one is blaming the passengers themselves, but rather government policies which have allowed these liners free reign in the name of profit.
Cruise ships are also apparently having a catastrophic effect on the infrastructure of the fragile, aquatic destination. The wake from megaships is eroding the very foundations of the city.
Venice is made up of dozens of marshy, sandy islands. The ancient buildings are constructed upon a lattice of wooden piles, which go through the mud until they settle on the compressed clay below. These alder posts have held up under centuries of immersion but the weight and power of the cruise ships seems to be finishing them off.
That’s got the attention of the World Monument Fund (WMF) and Venice has been included in its list of sites under threat. Since the list includes locations in Syria and the Yangon Historic City Centre in Myanmar (Burma), it’s clear just how serious this is.
The WMF points out that Venice is not just a pretty city. They describe it as “symbolic of an indelible desire to master one’s environment” and “an engineering wonder and cultural masterpiece graced with thousands of historic buildings, churches, palaces and plazas”.
The historic grandeur of a location like St Mark’s is somewhat lost. However, when the cruise ships anxious to please their passengers sweep so close to monuments like the Basilica in St Mark’s Square, they eclipse it completely from the water.
The sight of a multistorey megaboat towering over this most evocative of travel sights is a very uncomfortable one. A law banning the ships from the area close to St Mark’s after the shipwreck was recently lifted amid claims that a sinking couldn’t happen here.
Cristiano Gasparetto, a local environmentalist, told the Huffington Post that the ships not only cause physical damage to quays and foundations of Venice but also generate the same amount of emissions as 15,000 cars daily while they are docked.
Protesters took to the water recently to stop ships from docking and sailed the lagoons in small boats with banners asking for big ships to be banned. It seems their efforts have partly paid off. In a ray of hope for the city, a new law has been passed, which should see megaships banned from the Venice Lagoon by November and smaller cruise ship volume reduced to 20 per cent of its current capacity this month.
That doesn’t mean they’ll stop coming; ships will simply be sent through the Contorta Sant’Angelo Canal instead, but at least their gargantuan shadows won’t fall onto the very heart of the city anymore.
Venice’s delicate buildings have a temporary reprieve from big business and perhaps it’ll be a little easier to find a shady corner to get lost in once more.