Heading to Murano on the vaporetto and leaving behind the impressive panoramic view of Venice.
Just a year ago we lamented that overtourism was devouring Venice. Months later, the pandemic turned the city upside down and the clean canals made way for nature to emerge again. But... now what?
Venice without you (Charles Aznavour)
What a profound emotion to remember yesterday / When everything in Venice spoke to me of love / Before my loneliness at sunset / Your distant memory comes looking for me
What quiet stillness, what endless sadness / How different Venice if I miss you / A gondola goes, sheltering a love / The one I gave you, tell me, where is he?
What sadness there is in you, you don't seem the same / You are another colder and grayer Venice / The serene channel of romantic light / And last night in the enchantment that made you dream
What quiet stillness, what endless sadness / How different Venice if I miss you / Not even the passing moon has the same brilliance / How sad and lonely Venice is without your love
How I suffer when I think that Venice died / The love that you swore to keep eternal / There is only one goodbye left, which I cannot forget / Today Venice without you, how sad and lonely it is
The Riva degli Schiavoni with the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore in the background
The last time I went to Venice, it was snowing so much that the Carnival masks worked almost more to keep ears warm than to hide noses. Because yes, it was snowing infinity and it was Carnival days; the sublimated postcard.
What better thing can a traveler ask for than to arrive at The most beautiful city in the world –Let's agree on this first, that Venice is the most beautiful city in the world– and find it in all its splendor: colossal snowflakes dancing on the gondolas and endless costumes letting off steam under a strange bustle, a bustle that did not exist in 2020 but that before was immense and, at the same time, monastic. Because Venice forces you to speak in a low voice and that has always saved you a bit from the noise.
One of the rooms of the Galerias dell'Academia
So it is likely that you will end up catching the vaporetto upside down and disembarking at Giudecca, where you will be greeted by the old Stucky mill, a perfect example of industrial neo-Gothic architecture from the 19th century. Let's see, it's almost a sacrilege to worship it when you've left Venice bursting with Renaissance in front of you. But yes, we love it, we love the gigantic brick block that was once a macaroni factory and today is a dapper Hilton hotel.
You never know where to start. And you never want to go to San Marcos first because you deny the souvenir, because you don't want to be like the rest and take the usual photo, double check.
We also venerate its calm streets, bars where you feel more like a traveler, less a tourist, discovering things like how Michelangelo lived here for three years of voluntary exile, our jaws dropping in front of Palladio's Santísimo Redentor church and yes, full of superlatives.
The arcades with their imposing colonnade
Well seen, the best thing about Giudecca could be to cross again. Return to Venice and decide to give a compliment on the Grand Canal to visit Peggy Guggenheim. To want to be Peggy Guggenheim, because it is in her house, the Venier dei Leoni Palace , where you understand why the patron, why she, like so many, decided to stay here.
And then you will want to buy some colossal sunglasses, one of those that are almost like a Carnival mask, and surrender, now, to the souvenir: to the Bellini at Harry's Bar, although you know that he is not going to be the best in the world because they have them all prepared and in single file as if they were fridge magnets, but who cares. Harry's Bellini is the best in the world.
A couple enjoy their New Year's meal on the terrace of the Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal
And you look at the sky. And you see the colors of Canaletto, Titian and Tintoretto parade before you, those sunsets painted in technicolor long before Visconti killed the city with the sorrowful adaptation of Mann's novel.
Tadzio, the protagonist, does not sleep in Venice, but in the lido , that twelve-kilometre tongue that licks its lips at the end of a beautiful summer because it is when everything tastes like cinema and the glitz of Hollywood sublimates splendor.
Dome of the basilica Santa Maria della Salute
The last time I went to Venice it was Carnival and there was no other virus than that of overcrowding, the one that had the Grand Canal exhausted, a lot of cruises and processions through Rialto.
Then the pandemic came and the echo could be heard in the streets, the waters turned the blue of Canaletto and there were even those who wanted to see dolphins jumping from palazzo to palazzo.
The photo was faked, but not our desire to imagine such a Venice. But no, you cannot be the most beautiful city in the world and pretend that no one looks at you. Now what, Venice.
The iconic Venetian pink hue of Palazzo Grassi
It is predicted that in ten years no one will live in the center of Venice –today, the population is just under 50,000 inhabitants– and the number of visitors will exceed 40 million a year, just twice as many as now.
With these data on the table, Venice has long been seen as the goose that lays the golden eggs of tourism. The fabled city that did not know how to manage its success and that, by exploiting its charms so much, ended with them. It is evident that the more than two billion euros of profit generated by tourism do not compensate for the high costs it causes.
What does it generate or what did it generate, because all these numbers are from the past, from the pre-pandemic world. Now, this half gas city in which practically everyone lives from tourism faces an additional problem: take back the reins of an impoverished economy which highlights the dangers of betting all cards on a single number.
But like a good crisis, this forced break also represents a unique opportunity to imagine the desired Venice, one in which the artisan workshops are more numerous than the souvenir shops and in which there are more resident artists and more investment in environmental projects and fewer one-day cruisers.
Overnight, Venice has become a laboratory in which to experiment with solutions to move towards a more responsible and sustainable tourism. And the travel industry is watching closely what is happening here.
Preparing the traditional New Year race in Fondamenta delle Zattere
According to experts, the solution is not so much to point out the culprits – cruise ships? Airbnb?–, but for develop a more inclusive model based on mutual collaboration between residents and tourists.
A model in which tourism contributes (and does not subtract) benefits to the urban infrastructure, which involves the citizen in the care of the historical and cultural heritage and, most importantly, that prioritizes respect for the environment and coexistence.
Thus, while tourists begin to return little by little and the City Council proposes new measures whose short-term objective is the management and regulation of visitor flows – turnstiles to control access in the most visited areas, tourist taxes, a quota and reservation system...–, hotels have strengthened their ties with museums, associations of artisans and artists to offer cultural programs that seduce other types of travelers , and different private initiatives coordinate among themselves to find alternatives and seek new uses for the number of buildings that are expected to end up empty and abandoned in the coming months.
The Renaissance facade of the Palazzo dei Camerlenghi next to the Rialto Bridge
Many have revived the old dream of turning Venice into a mixture of Brussels and Berlin and they look to the two universities in the city as the solution to all ills.
It is about attracting artistic foundations, research institutes, multinational corporations and digital nomads that make Venice an intellectual and scientific epicenter. Another of the great problems of the city, its environmental fragility, can turn in its favor, and serve as a magnet for institutions interested in studying climate change.
While we wait for some measure to be implemented that will lead to significant change, **the debate on the Venice we want is open and accepting proposals, and the ideas to achieve it have already been put to work. **
The colors of Venice