MODERN-DAY DOGE
Half of Venice to close for Clooney nuptials.
Not since the gilded barges of the doges swept down the Grand Canal will Venice have seen such a spectacle.
More than 150 Hollywood stars and luminaries of the art world will travel down one of the world’s most famous waterways Saturday for the wedding of George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin, his British fiancée.
The guests, who are expected to include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Cindy Crawford, Bono from U2, the opera tenor Andrea Bocelli and the singer Lana Del Rey, will be ferried from the Hotel Cipriano, on the island of Giudecca, to the Aman hotel on the Grand Canal, Venice’s only seven-star hotel, where the wedding reception is expected to take place.
But the marriage, which has been the subject of fevered speculation for weeks, will present a security headache for the Venetian authorities.
Celebrities will be escorted by police boats, an official at Venice city council confirmed, while other vessels, including gondolas, will be barred from lingering outside the Aman, which occupies a restored canal-front palace at the Palazzo Papadopoli.
The authorities are expected to stop short of completely closing the Grand Canal, which would cause an uproar among tourists and residents, but they will prevent boatloads of photographers from floating in front of the hotel in the hope of catching a glimpse of Mr. Clooney and his friends.
The growing excitement surrounding the wedding has raised the spectre of past tragedies, caused when the waterways of Venice have become too crowded.
A German tourist died last year near the famed Rialto Bridge after the gondola he and his family had rented was hit by a vaporetto, one of the water buses that ply the city’s can- als. The 50-year-old holidaymaker was crushed by the force of the collision, which threw his wife and their three children into the water.
While the Aman Hotel will host the wedding reception, the civil ceremony is expected to take place Monday in a palatial building on the Grand Canal owned by Venice council.
Ca’ Farsetti, which sits almost opposite the Aman Hotel, is a stunning 14th-century palazzo that houses the city’s town hall and main council offices.
The narrow alleyways and stone walkways around the town hall will be closed to pedestrians between noon and 2 p.m. on Monday, Venice council announced.
The “celebrity event” was likely to attract large numbers of spectators and could present a risk to public safety, it said. The couple will be married by Walter Veltroni, a friend of 53-year-old Mr. Clooney and a former mayor of Rome, who has obtained a special licence to perform the ceremony.
The actor and director is expected to wear an Armani suit, while Ms. Alamuddin, a human rights lawyer, will wear an Alexander McQueen dress designed by Sarah Burton, who was responsible for the Duchess of Cambridge’s bridal gown.
Mr. Clooney’s best man is Rande Gerber, husband of Cindy Crawford, while Ms. Alamuddin’s chief bridesmaid is expected to be her sister, Tala.
The Cipriani, the hotel where guests will stay, is well known to the Hollywood star — he has stayed there several times, especially during the annual Venice Film Festival.
But he ruled it out as a wedding venue because of the ghosts of girlfriends past. He took many of his former flames there, including the Italian showgirl Elisabetta Canalis, who recently married an American surgeon in Sardinia.