Venice is being destroyed by tourists

“A deadly plague haunts Venice,” says Salvatore Settis: a “rapacious tourist monoculture” that threatens to ruin the historic city and turn it into a “Disneyfied shopping mall”. The locals have had enough: last week posters appeared reading, in English: “Tourists go away!!! You are destroying this area.” They’re right. The millions that pour in each year are profoundly altering the city’s nature. To make room for them, many citizens are effectively banished from the centre; the only work for those who remain is in hotels and restaurants, or selling souvenirs. Along the Grand Canal, offices, banks and shops have been demolished to make way for new hotels; so much so that Unesco has threatened to strip Venice of its status as a World Heritage Site (the only city to have suffered this “ignominy” so far is Dresden). Then there are the “gigantic” cruise ships that tower over the Piazza San Marco – one regular visitor is twice as tall as the landmark Doge’s Palace. If one such monster ran aground, in a repeat of the 2012 Costa Concordia disaster, it would “wreck centuries of irreplaceable history”. The obvious solution is to cap the number of tourists and to nurture industries that would allow young residents to stay. Vacant buildings should be refurbished, not knocked down. Above all, Italy must change its attitude towards Venice, and start to place cultural heritage before “petty business”.