In May, at the opening of the rescheduled Venice Biennale of Architecture—pandemic edition—banners hung from every doorway in the Arsenal emblazoned with the question “How will we live together?,” the theme of this year's show. As I explored photographer Marco Cappelletti's hauntingly beautiful City to Dust, a collection of images depicting an empty Palazzo San Marco and a shuttered Rialto Bridge, every step I took made an unsettling crunch. The floor was constructed of terrazzo tiles in the shape of Venice, suggesting the damage crowds do to the city. “Because the tourists trample her soul...” the narrator of an accompanying video stated grimly. “Every single step is, for every single visitor, a physical confrontation with his or her potentially harmful impact on the environment.”
Bemoaning the perils of Venice—the cruise ships and dwindling population; the fact that it's more a theme park than a place where people live and thrive; and, don't forget, it's sinking!—is nothing new. Observers have lamented the city's overexposure since at least 1909, when Henry James wrote in Italian Hours, “The Venice of today is a vast museum...and you march through the institution with a herd of fellow-gazers. There is nothing left to discover or describe....” But this was hardly the Venice I encountered when my architect-husband, John, and I arrived a few weeks before the Biennale—when tourism was still banned in Italy—to build an installation for the exhibition. What we found was a city grappling with how to move forward with the world paused.
All those quiet days and empty streets gave Venetians precious time to ponder real-life solutions to their overtourism problem. The government has attempted for years to alleviate the issue, passing measures from installing turnstiles to keep a head count to taxing day-trippers, but some of the biggest initiatives in decades gained traction while the city was in lockdown. In March, the government decreed that it would ban cruise ships weighing more than 40,000 tons from the Venetian lagoon. That same month, the mayors of Venice and Florence teamed up on a manifesto demanding that the Italian government impose tighter restrictions on the thousands of short-term rentals contributing to the cities' housing crisis. And following pressure from local activist groups, Venice mayor Luigi Brugnero recently announced his administration is working on a booking system that will establish quotas on tourist access to the city's historical center.
“It feels a bit like the beginning of a new era,” says Valeria Duflot, cofounder of the Venice-based think tank Overtourism Solution. “The crisis catapulted tourism to the top of the political agenda, providing a historic opportunity to transform the industry at the root.” For Venice, that transformation will come when the old extractive tourism model—in which travelers focus solely on what they can take away from a destination—is replaced with a regenerative model that also helps sustain local communities. Duflot is helping to nudge that shift through her website Venezia Autentica, which provides a veritable how-to guide to conscientious tourism, listing locally owned businesses and certified tour guides, and suggesting itineraries that take travelers off the beaten track by showcasing places like the neoclassical Museo Correr and artisan workshops making authentic Carnival masks. “The return of tourism at the level it used to be is expected for 2024,” Duflot says, “and we aim by then to have created a dynamic of transformation that renders going back to the old normal obsolete.”
The great COVID-19 reset also underpinned the need not just for fewer tourists but for more Venetians. “The pandemic made absolutely clear the total dependence on tourism to survive,” says Fabio Carrera, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts, who teaches part-time in Venice and for 30 years has studied solutions to improve local life through his WPI Venice Project Center. “The real problem is not tourism—it's that there are no alternatives to tourism.” At least half the working population is in travel, giving the industry outsize power over everything from the types of businesses that survive (souvenir shops, not grocery stores) to the funding of public transportation (which runs more regularly to tourist locales). Carrera argues that developing tech and other entrepreneurial industries independent of tourism will create a more livable Venice—and a more attractive home base for new residents. To that end, this fall, his incubator on the island of Giudecca, across from San Marco, will launch a new partnership with MIT that aims to help Venetian start-ups get off the ground.
Of course, Venice can't be fixed overnight. Both Carrera and Duflot say their missions are focused on the long term. “It's going to take 10, 20, maybe 30 years to get where we want to be,” Carrera says. This became especially obvious on June 3, when the first cruise ship in more than a year sailed past Piazza San Marco. Soon after, in response to UNESCO advisers' recommendation that the organization list Venice as an endangered site, the Italian government said it would begin enforcing its ban on August 1, also lowering the weight limit to 25,000 tons.
On our last night in Venice, the city was quiet, save for a few Biennale-goers, as John and I sat at our usual table at La Zucca, a neighborhood spot that seemed to draw enough locals to remain busy even without tourists. I watched an older couple to my left order without looking at the menu. But it was the table of four to my right that was interested in us. When we told them we were American, their disappointment was palpable. I knew they'd already begun to miss their hushed little city.
I wanted to tell them that over the past three weeks, John and I had slowly soaked in Venice rather than gulping it all up in a day like most tourists. We'd become regulars at restaurants owned by locals and skipped many of the standard attractions for visits to family-run squeri, or boatyards on the lagoon. Instead, though, I just raised my glass.
“To Venice!” I said earnestly.
“To Venice,” they echoed back.
This article appeared in the September/October 2021 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
