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Venice

It's an excursion that's become an invasion, a global invasion that's overwhelming one of the world's most beautiful cities, Venice. The city's always suffered under a high tide, the big one that rises from the northern Adriatic through the Venice lagoon and swells the network of canals.

That natural threat rose and engulfed the city in 1966 causing enormous damage. Now though, it's the relentless king tide of tourism that's consuming Venice and city planners are at a loss to stem the flow.

The problem is a boom in a snapshot tourism, Venice in a day. It's made life for locals unbearable and a long lingering look around Venice all but impossible. Chris Clark and the Italian city too attractive for its own good.

Shots of Venice

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18:00

Clark: Venice was built to impress. Venetians were a power, they wanted everyone to know about it. It was one in the eye for their rivals. Who wouldn’t be dazzled by the achievement? Dry land, who needs it? Build one of the great cities of the world on water.

18:15

Canals

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18:33

Clark: If you were going to build Venice today, you wouldn't, which is of course why the place still bowls us over. How did it happen? Why here? How on earth did they do it?

18:40

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Tourists

Venice produces a kind of sensory overload in just about everyone who sees it. No photograph can really do it justice, so we blunder around, snapping everything and understanding much less. And in the process creating one gigantic tourist crush which drives visitors and Venetians crazy.

18:58

Massimo: Almost all the tourism in Venice is what we call 'eat and run' tourism.

19:24

Massimo and Clark

Clark: When Massimo Caccari was Mayor of Venice, he ran a poster campaign showing the seamier side of the city. The rubbish on St Mark's Square, dead rats in the canals, to see if a touch of realism might dent the romanticism. Didn't make a scrap of difference.

19:30

Massimo

Massimo: Venice is an international myth, so what attracts people are these mythical aspects.

19:52

Clark in amphibious Volkswagon

Clark: Among the many myths about Venice is that it's a city without cars. Not true and here are the pictures to prove it. Venice isn't dead, in fact it's fearfully crowded with the living which is the point Livio di Marchi was making when he built his amphibious Beetle.

20:00

Livio: There was a time when I had a little boat and I noticed that as I was coming towards the Grand Canal, the waves were washing over the front of it, so I said to my son, Matthew, "Let's turn back, the Grand Canal has become a freeway. "

Clark: And some days the Grand Canal looks more like spaghetti junction. The vaporetti, the little ferries that are the city's main transport, are overcrowded. All aboard for a sardine's eye view of Venice, which is why a lot of Venetians now think it would be better to have just the tourists who really want to get to know Venice properly.

20:46

Tourists on water taxi

Livio: If we're talking about someone who just comes to Venice to have a quick look around then it'd be better if they didn't come at all.

21:07

Livio in Beetle

Clark: A city which has long been in danger from the water, is now at risk of being washed away by a human tide of tourism which knows little of history, of why Venice even exists.

21:23

Tourists

Clark: And why did you come to Venice?

21:41

Woman 1: Oh just to take a tour.

Clark: Aha, so it was just on the program?

Woman 1: Yep.

Tourist

Clark: Right. What did you know about Venice before you came here?

Man 1: It had canals, that's about it.

Woman 2: Really I did not know much history, yeah.

Clark: So why did you come here?

Woman 3: Oh I heard it was the most beautiful city in the world.

Woman 2: It's the city, I've always wanted to visit

Woman 3: And to take a gondola ride, that's just something I've always wanted to do.

Tourists in gondolas

Clark to camera

Clark: The problem is that the whole world wants to take a gondola ride and all at once. Venice is sinking, the water is rising and the high tide mark of Venetian achievement was made centuries ago, but it seems that mass nostalgia for this place increases the more its fortunes decline.

22:08

If you want to get anything done in Venice, then try to do it early in the morning. It's just after eight thirty and already the tourists are filing into St Mark's Square. In a couple of hours, this place will be jam-packed.

22:25

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Tourists in St. Mark's Square

Clark: Nothing seems to deter them. Not the five dollar mineral water at a café in the square or the seven bucks cover charge for the music.

22:43

You can't blame the venetians, I guess. If we're crazy enough to pay these prices, they'd be mad not to charge them, which makes it all the more surprising that even the venetians have had enough and are thinking about trying to limit or even cut the number of tourists.

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Marino on gondola

Clark: Marino Cortese runs the tourism department of the Venice council.

23:18

Marino: Unfortunately, Venice has become a whistlestop on a nine day tour of Europe – and that's absurd.

Clark: Venetians are pretty much united in the view that they have too many of the wrong sort of tourists, the sort who just want to look at St Mark's and take a gondola ride, and not really delve into the city's rich history.

Marino: This is the price you pay for mass tourism. There's no doubt about it. But people coming to Venice should make the most of a special opportunity. Otherwise, it's just like going to any other place.

23:43

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24:03

Views of Venice from canals

Clark: Venice is a city of stunning first impressions. And there are those who believe the current era of mass tourism is lowering the tone of the whole place.

24:09

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Hotel Cipriani

Clark: And tone is something they rate very highly at the Hotel Cipriani. Since the fifties, they've been doing it in style at the Cipriani, from Liz Taylor to Gwyneth Paltrow, the guest list is a celebrity who's who.

24:25

Natale

Super:

Natale Rusconi

Managing Director, Cipriani

Natale: Everything has changed. They go around in shorts, they try to come, sometimes visitors here for drinks, they come in in shorts and at six o'clock in the evening for drinks and we don't want them. So this is the change.

24:40

Garden of Cipriani

Clark: If you have to ask the price of a room at the Cipriani, then you can't afford it. But no matter how much the high-flyers pay to bed down here for the night, during the day they have to battle the same crowds as everyone else.

24:56

So the hotel's managing director, Natale Rusconi, thinks it's time to rein in the antics of the hoi polloi.

Natale

Natale: Probably we'd need more police to survey and to, to discipline people, they shouldn't sleep or sit in the middle of the square, practically half naked. I mean this is what happens during the summer you see.

25:15

Clark: Dr. Rusconi favours charging people for the right to simply enter Venice.

Natale: I'm sure I'm going to make a lot of enemies by saying this but I couldn't care less. I mean I believe Venice is such a jewel, it's such a beautiful place, look at that, that it should be really defended and the local authorities should be very severe, very severe.

25:38

Marco in glass shop

Clark: This is not a view confined just to the top end of town.

25:56

Marco Francalli: Everything is made in Murano glass. You can see yourself.

Clark: Marco Francalli, a local shopkeeper, who relies on tourists for his living, also wants to charge the day-trippers.

Marco: They feel free to behave as if they were on a beach… no T-shirt… sitting on the ground and eating. I've been to America, I've been to England, I've been to France -- I've never seen English people behave like that. I've never seen a German behave the way he does in Venice, in some cases.

26:12

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Tourists

Clark: So what and who are we really talking about here? Well mainly the estimated ten million day visitors who come to Venice each year, many of whom bring their own lunch.

26:41

And there's the real issue, they don't buy much and for all the talk about high culture, Venice is a place where art and commerce are joined at the hip pocket. So paying for the privilege is popular with local shopkeepers.

Marco: It's very simple. When people buy a ticket at the beginning of their trip you put 5,000 or 10,000 lire extra to help keep the city clean – because it costs a lot of money to keep it clean – and if you look around, this city's dirty.

27:13

Clark: But this notion of charging day-trippers an entrance fee is given short shrift by the tourist office.

27:31

Marino: That's just some people being provocative. No one's ever going to put a tax on, precisely because Venice is a normal city.

Clark: Venice a normal city? That's going a bit far. True, it's the regional capital, with courts and all the usual administration, but if Venice is a normal city then so is Disneyland.

27:50

Natale: If it were like Disneyland, I wouldn't care at all. I wouldn't mind at all because Disneyland is very well-organised.

28:03

Clark: Plenty of Venetians don't like the idea of charging an entrance fee precisely because of the Disneyland connotations.

28:12

They still insist that Venice is a normal city. To concede otherwise effectively makes the whole city a museum and Venetians themselves therefore living exhibits.

28:22

Livio in shop

Livio: There are lots of people who want to come and see Venice but the city has to take care that not too many people come to see it on the same day.

28:33

Livio sculpting

Clark: When he's not cruising the canals in his wooden car, Livio de Marchi, Venetian born and bred, carves out a successful career as a sculptor, but he's part of a dwindling band. Fewer than 70,000 people now live in Venice. One hundred thousand have left in the last few decades.

28:49

Livio: Maybe I'm a bit of an unusual case. I live very well with the tourists and unfortunately, with few Venetians. I remember when I was a boy there were five or six times more Venetians.

29:07

Fish market

Clark: This is Venice's conundrum – tourism is its life but it's also the reason many people leave.

29:31

Daniella: With tourists, the biggest problem in my opinion is just getting around on the canals. There isn't a ferry for the tourists and a ferry for the Venetians – as perhaps there should be – so in the summer there's total chaos.

29:39

Daniella and Marco shopping

Clark: Daniella and Marco Taggliafindo are Venetian but for them it's a hideously expensive way of life.

30:01

Marco: You have to come here to the Rialto to save a bit of money on the shopping. Supermarkets are very crowded and you have to carry heavy shopping. It's not easy, so a lot of people leave.

Market scenes

Clark: Belatedly perhaps Venetian authorities are acting to try to make Venice a bit more livable for tourists and locals. Already tourists pay about eight times as much as Venetians to travel on the vaporetti.

30:37

Marino: Water transport is very expensive and so we make the tourists pay the real cost of transporting Venetians to try to counter the cost of living and prevent further population loss.

30:52

Clark: According to Marino Cortese Venice needs to educate tourists, to attract them to other interesting parts of the city , away from St Mark's Square and other bottlenecks.

31:10

View from canal

Marino: In fact the city's very large with a big historic centre that's little known and not usually enjoyed by the tourists.

31:20

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Gondolas

Clark: It's true, away from St Mark's, Venice can be delightfully tranquil. So there are big plans to develop new tourist sites to try to spread the tourists round more evenly.

31:39

And just to go full circle, there are some, including the former mayor Massimo Caccari, who argue that if Venice does this properly, it'll be able to handle even more tourists.

31:53

Massimo

Massimo: If we succeed in this strategy which is already underway, Venice will be able to live not with 15 million tourists but with 20 or 25 million tourists without any problem.

32:05

Clark: That is until the locusts of mass tourism have had their fill and move on. What then for Venice?

32:21

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Credits:

Reporter: Chris Clark

Camera: Geoff Clegg

Sound: Kate Graham

Editor: Stuart Miller