NYT/IHT: Vanishing Venice: A City Swamped by a Sea of Tourists

Vanishing Venice: A City Swamped by a Sea of Tourists
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 1, 2006


(Sandro Michahelles for The International Herald Tribune)
Tourists easily exceed residents, totaling 150,000 a day for Carnevale

....From a peak of 171,000 residents in 1951, the population of the historic center of Venice has fallen to fewer than 62,000.

“We’ve reached the point of collapse, the point where things could fall apart,” said Ezio Micelli, an urban planner who leads the municipal real estate development agency. But even as Venetians leave, tourists have been coming. And coming.

According to recent estimates, 15 million to 18 million tourists have come to Venice over the last year. On some days they easily outnumber residents, and during the pre-Lenten Carnevale tourists can number 150,000 a day.

Should the trend continue, newspapers fretted recently, by 2030 authentic Venetians could disappear here and the historic center could be reduced to a shell subsisting only on tourism.

“It’s not meaningful to talk about Venice as a city anymore,” said Robert Davis, a professor of Italian history at Ohio State University and an author of “Venice: the Tourist Maze,” an entertaining and thoughtful cultural critique of the tourism phenomenon. “The city is basically already lost,” he said. “The speculation is what will happen to it next.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/world/europe/01venice.html?hp&ex=1159761600&en=07f2e4ce0f7f2924&ei=5094&partner=homepage

It stunk, there were WAY too many tourists. I won't go back in high season, I've heard off season is a little better, but then you deal with the aqua alta.

Although touristy, it was beautiful and not stinky at all as my mom remembered from the 50s. I wish we could have stayed longer, but we had a hotel in Pordenone, and took the train in from Mestre.

The water was not high then, either. I think that's mostly in December/January.

I had an old art history professor that was there during the worst of it one year, and you couldn't pay me to go to Venice in January. Higher water means more rats ready to take a nip at you where there's dry land. :scared: