You Don’t Want to End Up Like Venice

[SOUNDS OF WAVES LAPPING, OARS ROWING IN WATER]

COSTANZA SPOCCI, PRODUCER: The way you’re supposed to see Venice is by rowing a boat. When it was built, people used row boats, and so these canals are actually the real streets of Venice.

TARIRO MZEZEWA, HOST: Producer Costanza Spocci is in a small rowboat, floating down a canal in Venice, Italy. It’s the morning, and it offers a rare moment of peace in the bustling city.

CS: I was watching the canal. I was looking at the buildings, and I really felt my heart at peace. This way, you can also enter in smaller canals. So it’s like walking in narrow streets. And so you can find more quiet neighborhoods. You could still see the grandeur of this city. I mean, it’s beautiful.

[MUSIC]

CS: It’s very unique in the world. There’s no other city than Venice in the world. It’s impossible to find, and it’s impossible to replicate.

TM: For decades, Venice has been a major tourist destination. And as Constanza describes, the reasons are clear. It is a singular place of rich history — a city built on Roman pylons sitting in the ocean. And yet, it has become a cautionary tale.

[SOUNDS OF BUSTLING STREETS, CHATTER]

CLAUDIO VERNIER [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: This city was long pointed out as the negative example of global over-tourism. Mayors of many cities in Europe used to say, “You don’t want to end up like Venice, do you?”

TM: Claudio Vernier owns a restaurant in the middle of the often-crowded Piazza San Marco. He’s got a front-row seat to the recent surge in tourists.
CV: From 2015 to now, tourism numbers have doubled. So we’ve gone from about 15, 16 million tourists a year to nearly 34 million.
TM: The reach of the tourism industry has become so broad, it has overwhelmed the city’s residents, leaving them little reason to stay.
CV: So, the situation is dangerous, ’cause we are at risk of turning this city into an empty Pompeii, devoid of its soul. And its soul is precisely the people who live here.
[THEME MUSIC]

TM: From WHYY, this is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa. In this episode, we’re going to explore what makes a city, a city. We’ll learn the risks that Venice faces from overtourism — to its residents, its culture, its very foundation. And find out how the city transformed from a place of rich, cultural commerce, to something more like a giant museum, a relic to be admired.

That’s coming up, after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

TM: Welcome back to Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

[SOUNDS OF PEOPLE WALKING AND TALKING IN PIAZZA SAN MARCO]

CS: You see the buildings are really old. Actually, this was supposed to be like the old market, and in that streets, there used to be, like, gold sellers, when Venice was, like, a huge port.

TM: Venice has drawn the world’s curiosity and wonder for centuries.

CS: Venice was a bit like Alexandria of Egypt, was a place of trade, a place of mixing of cultures, people from the Arab world, from China, from Turkey, from the Persian Empire, from Greece. I mean there was this mix, and all this through trade. So, for example, you could find, you know, silk and textile, and all this material that, back in the time, was impossible to find anywhere else. So it was really a magic place.

TM: Some residents say that history isn’t so far away.

GABRIELLA GIARETTA [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: I’m Gabriella Giaretta, 83 years old, and I’ve lived in Venice all my life. I’ve been a teacher for 25 years.

CS: I met this woman, and she was born there in that neighborhood, and her name is Gabriella. And she’s very active. She’s trying to keep the neighborhood as it was.

[MUSIC]

GG: My mother wouldn’t let me go out alone when I was young. [Laughter] I remember that where we are now, at these coffee tables, it used to be all cordoned off with market stalls selling wholesale fruits, vegetables, and fish.

TM: Venice has been known for these markets throughout history. But they don’t just represent the old world. They are the industries that Venice is losing. And jobs that once sustained residents’ lives.

GG: The most annoying thing about this unmanaged change is seeing the disappearance of neighborhood shops. Like, we used to have six to seven butchers around here. Now there are only two left. There were 18 fishmongers. Now t here are only six, and they mostly cater to restaurants rather than residents.

TM: These were thriving careers in Venice not that long ago. Some of the merchants are still working, like Gino Mascari.

GINO MASCARI [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: I’m the last of the Mohicans! [Laughter] We sell spices, so we’re merchants, but we’re traditional, old-school merchants, you know? We still offer high-quality goods, and have a real human connection with our customers.

TM: But there’s no doubt that tourism is changing Venice.

[SOUNDS OF WAVES LAPPING, OARS ROWING IN WATER]

CLAUDIO PRESSIN [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: Well, I’m one of those who think that tourism kills cities. But I reckon it does that in all the historic and artistic cities.

TM: Claudio Pressin is a retired teacher. He offered Costanza a ride in his gondola.

CP: Venice needs more, right? Firstly, it needs residents, but they’re disappearing. We’re dwindling. I mean, I was born in ’55. In the early ’50s, we were 150,000 strong. Now we’re less than 50,000.

TM: Claudio says Venice is at risk of turning from a living, breathing city, into a museum. And he thinks that a big reason it can’t retain its residents is housing.

CP: And at the same time, the number of tourist accommodations has skyrocketed. It needs real residents first. Many own homes here, but don’t actually live here.

[MUSIC]

TM: Part of the challenge is that Venice is unique. It’s a group of small islands, and they’re being overrun. In just two years, the number of Airbnb listings in the city doubled. These issues are reflected in the experience of university students.

CS: So you have all this human capital, all this potential, that you actually educate in Venice, and then you just let it go away.

TM: Venice has some of the best universities in the country for humanities and social sciences.

CS: And this is really a waste because this potential would actually like to stay there and do something in the city. But nobody is considering the students, that would really like to live there and change something.

TM: These issues show no sign of slowing down. In fact, the recent boom in short-term rentals has them escalating.

LUCREZIA LUDOVICI [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: It’s gotten a whole lot worse. Both tourism, and the choices of property owners looking to make big profits and much higher earnings, lead to many students getting into debt and having to apply for student loans, or they have to drop out of their studies entirely.

TM: Many students are frustrated with this situation, like Lucrezia Ludovici. She feels the housing shortage is directly related to limited career prospects.

LL: I care about those who study in Venice. It’s important to be able to highlight not only the limited housing conditions but also the student conditions of those who come to Venice with the promise of pursuing an important university career because there are internationally recognized universities here, but then they encounter real difficulties in living in the city.

[MUSIC]

VO: Coming up, an even more existential threat to the city: it’s sinking. That’s after the break.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

[MUSIC]

VO: This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Perhaps the most well-known fact about Venice is that it’s surrounded by the sea.

SIMONE VENTURINI [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: It’s a city on water, and it requires tools dedicated solely to managing a city on water. And these tools simply don’t exist today.

TM: Simone Venturini, a city councilor, says that’s what makes it so hard to manage tourism. And if he can’t figure out some solutions soon, Costanza worries there might not be a Venice left to save.

[MUSIC]

CS: Venice is a beautiful city, is a unique city, but it’s also very fragile. And Venice is fragile because it’s going to be destroyed by these waves that are actually crashing on its buildings and on its spaces. And so you have these huge waves that are actually eroding the buildings from beneath.

TM: Venice was built on Roman wooden pylons, and this foundation has started sinking over time. That, paired with rising sea levels around the world, is threatening the city itself. To make matters worse, on any given day, there are thousands of boats in Venice’s canals.

CS: You have just to imagine this canal full, really full, of taxi boats.

[SOUND OF TAXI BOATS WHIRRING, AND COSTANZA IMITATING THEM]

CS: You have this roaring, you know, you have this boat speeding by. And the problem is that this creates huge waves. So waves are high, of course, the more fast you go, the higher the wave is.

TM: This phenomenon is called moto ondoso, directly translated as “moving waves.”

CS: So the stronger it goes, and it crashes against the wall of a building, for example, so this is the problem of moto ondoso.

TM: This isn’t just a problem for the buildings.

CS: And here you have, still, fishermen working and fishing, but there is no fish anymore. So with the moto ondoso, this part of land, it’s getting eroded, it’s getting destroyed, and so the ecosystem is destroyed.

TM: Costanza spoke with a fisherman to see how he’s handling these changes.

[SOUNDS OF A MARKETPLACE]

CS: I would say he was really, I mean, this man, you know, fishing man, so, with all, he has, like, this face a bit burned from the sun, these very blue eyes, and he used to talk about Venice and the laguna with love in his eyes.

[SOUND OF FISHERMAN GREETING CUSTOMERS]

TM: Enrico Trevisan has watched the encroaching waves affect his city — and his livelihood. At this point, he’s desperate.

ENRICO TREVISAN [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: This fish here doesn’t exist in the lagoon anymore, partly due to pollution, partly because the marshes have disappeared. Everything’s destroyed now, all the way to the end. This is happening all over the lagoon. If someone doesn’t do something about the wave motion, there won’t be anything left. The entire habitat of the islands in the Venice Lagoon will be ruined.

[SOUND OF BLARING CRUISE SHIP HORN]

TM: City leaders like Simone worry a lot about cruise ships — and their passengers.

SV: The critical issue is that people arrive in masses at the same time, sometimes move in groups, don’t know the city, don’t understand its fragility, and sometimes don’t even respect it. Essentially, they stay here for three, four hours, and then leave, crowding the city both on entry and exit and essentially leaving nothing behind. It causes more damage to the city in costs than benefits.
TM: Cruises have this reputation all over the world. Harold Goodwin is the managing director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership. He says that because passengers usually have an all-inclusive package, they come ashore to sight-see — but not to contribute to the economy of the city.
HAROLD GOODWIN: Most tourists who go to the city of Venice are day-trippers, and many of them, with tickets on cruise lines, won’t eat in the town. They might have a drink or a cup of coffee, but their food is for free on the cruise line. So they’ve had a big breakfast, they come out, they walk around the streets of Venice, and go back on the boat.
TM: Allowing these oversized vessels to float through the delicate city center led to tragedy, when…
[NEWSCAST]
NEWSCASTER: The MSC Opera plows into Venice’s quayside. It is what residents of this ancient city have long feared would happen.
TM: In 2019, a nine-story cruise ship smashed into a Venice dock and a tourist river boat in a busy canal. Multiple people were injured. In the wake of the incident, cruise ships were banned from Venice Lagoon. It’s a start, says Simone, but the city is still vulnerable to the problem of wave motion.
SV: They absolutely do not touch the central area of Venice. What makes “moto ondoso” today in Venice are the small boats, basically the ones that carry 40, 50, 100 tourists from the beaches, and arrive in San Marco. Also what makes “moto ondoso” is the public transport, because everything that moves in the water, moves the water.

[MUSIC]

TM: The waves caused by boats are destroying the ecosystem.

CS: You also have these waves of people, waves of tourists, coming from the earth on the city, on the island, on the surface and it’s actually destroying the city as well. So you have these huge waves, you know, from the sea and from the waves of people that are actually invading Venice, and making this unique city in the world even more fragile.

TM: Starting this year, the Venetian government turned to a controversial measure in order to manage its overtourism problem.

[NEWSCAST]

NEWSCASTER: A day exploring Venice’s Byzantine wonders will come at a price. Tourists entering the world-famous port city will be subject to an entrance fee.

CS: They’re going to use and see if actually this reduces the number of tourists. This entrance fee is thought as to put a stop to overtourism.

TM: Simone thinks the fee could help monitor the number of visitors to the city.

SV: Being able to establish tools that can somehow predict and know in advance how many people are expected for that day, because today, the municipality doesn’t know how many trains, and how many people each train brings, or how many tourists are expected from the beaches. This is a significant factor in managing the numbers because if I know how many people are coming to dinner, I organize the table, the service, and the dishes based on the people I know are coming to dinner. If I expect 10, and 100 show up, I have a problem managing the kitchen, and even the dining room.

TM: Lifelong Venice resident Gabriella agrees with Simone. And she wants to take the entry fee a step further and limit the number of tourists allowed in the city.

[SOUNDS OF CHATTER IN MARKET]

GG: It’s logical that there has to be a fee, and the ticket they’ve introduced now, they haven’t set a cap on the maximum number of tourists allowed into Venice. So paying €5 doesn’t deter them. Sure, people come and go with €5.

[MUSIC]

TM: While it has the potential to stem the tide of visitors, some fear that this fee only worsens the perception of Venice as a “museum city.” Not a contributing municipality for the country, but a place for foreigners to merely observe its novelty and charm.

CS: The last of the residents are living there, and you want to enter a city and you have to pay a ticket. And this was pretty strange for me. Before going there, I was really thinking, “This is a very bad idea. How come you have to buy a ticket to enter a city?” And I still feel that it’s really strange. It’s, yeah, it feels you’re entering a theme park.

TM: It’s frustrating, but Simone insists the city is doing everything it can.

SV: I mean, every day someone complains because there’s too much tourism, but when, finally, someone tries to manage this excess tourism during certain peaks, they complain because, “Oh no, we might become a museum.” The situation is this: either we try to use this tool as a control for the expected numbers of different tourism management, or we do nothing, nothing else. There is no other tool consistent with the regulations that we can adopt.

TM: There’s another resource to fight overtourism that’s harder to measure: Venetians themselves. Costanza says the young people she spoke with are still passionate about retaining the ability to live in the city.

CS: A month ago, they organized a protest. It was a sit-in. And actually, they stayed four nights and four days, sleeping in a tent. They were protesting because of their housing rights.

TM: One student, Marco Dario, isn’t ready to wave the white flag and cede the city to tourists.

MARCO DARIO [TRANSLATED FROM ITALIAN]: We don’t want to accept the evidence that this city is doomed to be an open-air museum. For us, it’s still a living city, one that can come back to life, one that can have a future that isn’t solely dictated by tourism and the commercialization of all the artistic heritage it possesses. But it can still be a city of services, a city that pays attention to those who live here, and therefore, it can, in a certain way, be reborn.

TM: Harold echoes this idea: that if Venice wants to avoid becoming a museum, it needs to retain its citizens.

[MUSIC]

HG: Places do not stop changing. A culture survives because it evolves. If the place becomes dominated by tourists is that it continues to evolve for sure, but it evolves to satisfy a single group of consumers, and that is tourists. So the risk is that the place becomes without citizens.

TM: Without its people, the future of the city is grim.

HG: And once the place doesn’t have citizens, it loses the ability to evolve, to maintain its continuity with its past. And that continuity with its past is really important to people’s sense of place.

[SOUNDS OF WAVES LAPPING, OARS ROWING IN WATER]

TM: It’s obvious to many of the people who’ve spent time there that Venice is still worth fighting for.

[MUSIC]

[SOUNDS OF WALKING AND TALKING IN A MARKET]

CS: It’s very unique in the world. There’s no other city than Venice in the world. It’s impossible to find, and it’s impossible to replicate. When you go through the canals rowing a boat, you can kind of imagine this history. You can kind of imagine merchants arriving and watching this city and saying, “Wow.” You see all those houses like old houses, they’re, like, yellow, they’re pink, they’re red. They’re beautiful. They have this beautiful facade. They’re, like, monuments themselves. You have all this smell of the sea. You have this, you know, you have all these colors. You have all this romance. Venice, despite the overtourism, still is romantic.

[MAN SINGING, PLAYING THE ACCORDION]

[THEME MUSIC]

TM: Next time, on Peak Travel…

RODNEY PASKO [OVER PA ANNOUNCEMENT]: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls the lounge car is once again open and serving.

TM: We ride a cross-country train in the United States, and figure out why America has invested in cars and planes over rail travel.

STEVEN HIGASHIDE: Talk about American exceptionalism. We have the transportation system that’s doing the most harm to the climate of any wealthy country.

TM: And see what we can learn from countries with advanced, high-speed rail networks.

ICE HAN [TRANSLATED FROM MANDARIN CHINESE]: No time was wasted. I didn’t even feel anything, and we already finished traveling more than 350 kilometers.

TM: That’s next time, on Peak Travel.

This is Peak Travel. I’m your host, Tariro Mzezewa.

Our executive producer is Tom Grahsler. Our senior producer is Michael Olcott. Our producer is Michaela Winberg, and our associate producer is Bibiana Correa. We had production help on this episode from Costanza Spocci.

Our editor is Meg Driscoll. Original music, mixing and sound design by Catherine Anderson. Engineering by Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers. Our tile art was created by Nick Rogacki.

Special thanks to the voice actors who helped bring this episode to life: Jenna Bonofiglio, Marco de Risi, Marco Massari, Betty Miranda, Graziano Molteni, Giovanni Piazzese, and Roberto Pompili.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, the iHeart Radio app — or wherever you get your podcasts.

Executive Producer: Tom Grahsler
Senior Producer: Michael Olcott
Producer: Michaela Winberg
Associate Producer: Bibiana Correa
Additional Production: Costanza Spocci
Editor: Meg Driscoll
Original Music, Mixing, and Sound Design: Catherine Anderson
Engineers: Al Banks, Charlie Kaier, Diana Martinez, and Mike Villers
Tile Art: Nick Rogacki

Special thanks to the voice actors who helped bring this episode to life: Jenna Bonofiglio, Marco de Risi, Marco Massari, Betty Miranda, Graziano Molteni, Giovanni Piazzese, and Roberto Pompili.

Peak Travel is a production of WHYY, distributed by PRX, and part of the NPR podcast network.