Campaign For A Living Venice

After the UNESCO announcement of the possible insertion of Venice among the At-Risk World Heritage Sites, the main European and US dailies are criticizing local and national government’s inertia in resolving the problems.

By Enrico Tantucci

19 August 2023

The tourists on the vaporetto in Venice, smiling and waving at other, unknown tourists along the shores, who reciprocate, evidently have the following perception: Venice is no longer a city but a luxury theme park to visit for fun.

With the critical situation the city is heading towards, crushed by the now almost intolerable flow of tourists and an environmental emergency that MOSE cannot mask, the world press has also arrived at this perception, especially after the announcement of the possible insertion of Venice among the At-Risk World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

The English

For example, an authoritative British daily like The Guardian has recently written that “Venice is probably ground zero of the overtourism effect; tourists and residents have hit bed-for-bed parity, which makes normal life in the service of anything other than a tourist unviable. It creates a theme-park effect, to which even Rome – home to the most melodramatic monuments – hasn’t succumbed. In Rome, you can still at least glimpse the life underneath the day trip; in Venice, despite a recent clampdown on city-dwarfing cruise ships, UNESCO recently threatened to “blacklist” the city as a world heritage site, citing Italy’s failure to protect it from mass tourism and the climate crisis.”

It should be mentioned, incidentally, that after UNESCO’s announcement, neither Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro, nor Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano (on whom the Venice and Lagoon UNESCO site depend) have spoken a single syllable on the issue. The only one to speak about the seriousness of the problem has been Region President Luca Zaia.

Another English daily, the Daily Standard, writes that “UNESCO has affirmed that the corrective measures proposed by the Italian state are currently inadequate and not sufficiently detailed”. It adds that Italy “has not communicated in a sustained and substantial way” since the last session of the Committee in 2021, when UNESCO had already threatened to add Venice to the list of at-risk sites.

From Germany

UNESCO has stated its hope that “this inscription will translate into greater dedication and mobilization of the local and national interested parties to confront long-standing problems”. The noted German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine, referring to the UNESCO inspectors’ report, writes, “Because of mass tourism, the building boom on the nearby mainland and climate change.. the lagoon city risks “irreversible” damage, and the authorities are not doing more to protect la Serenissima”. It then clarifies: “Many of these problems have been known of for years, but overall Italy had not made significant progress to overcome them”.

“SOS Venice” is the headline of another widely read German journal, Bild, reporting that “the crowds of visitors are one of the city’s main problems and are destroying it, little by little”.

Overseas

The fate of Venice is also being followed with concern overseas, again in light of the UNESCO report of Venice’s possible insertion on the list of endangered World Heritage Sites. “UNESCO’s proposal”, writes the Washington Post, for example, “is the latest alarm bell about the future of Venice, one of the most fragile and most visited cities in the world, and about the efforts of the Italian government to protect it”. The US daily cites the opinion of Helene Marsh, professor of Environmental Sciences at James Cook University and an expert on climate change, according to whom “it is tragic that the state of conservation of one of the most precious cultural sites is so worrying”.

French Cousins

The French press has also closely followed recent developments regarding the situation in Venice after the announcement. Citing the report regarding the tourist overcrowding and the environmental emergency, the French daily Le Monde writes: “The resolution of these old but urgent problems has been hindered by the absence of a common global strategic vision” and by the “poor efficiency and coordination of the local and national Italian authorities”. It goes on to cite the comment of a UNESCO diplomat who said: “Venice must not be transformed into an open-air museum”.

Another French journal, Le Figaro, informs its readers that the UNESCO report on Venice “denounces the lack of action regarding mass tourism, urbanization and the climate threat”.

In short, the message being sent in this moment to world public opinion about Venice is that the city is in grave danger due to tourist overcrowding and the environmental emergencies – and that the Municipality and the Italian government are not doing enough to confront them. It will not be easy to get them to change their minds.

Source: La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre