Tourism saved Venice – but “Disneyland” city now finds itself strangled

If Birmingham, with its 35 miles of canals, is sometimes called the ‘Venice of the North’, then inevitably to its Italian counterpart falls the far more dubious monicker of ‘Birmingham of the South’. Perhaps that’s why the University of Warwick has had a presence here for so long – next year will make it 60 years based in the Mediterranean jewel far more popularly dubbed ‘La Serenissima’, the ‘Queen of the Adriatic’.

Like the rising and falling of the tides, there is the impression of cycles, that Venice will stay like this forever

Throughout that time, Warwick has annually dispatched a cohort of students to study history from amid the dreamy canals of Italy’s best-preserved city. Venice has a timelessness unlike any other location in Europe: gondolas still drift down its waterways; all the same squares and buildings that have stood for hundreds of years are still in use. When the sun sets over the lagoon, it illuminates the sky in an oily, green-blue ombré; the impression comes to mind of being suspended in a snow globe. Every ferry route in the city runs in a circle: like the rising and falling of the tides, there is the impression of cycles, that Venice will stay like this forever.

Yet time is running out, and perhaps faster here than anywhere else in Europe. The most obvious threat is ecological: in 70–80 years, the city may well be underwater, its centuries-old coexistence with the sea undone by global warming. But a far more imminent challenge, one that has disfigured Venice beyond recognition in only a few decades, is overtourism.

From 130,000 residents in 1973, Venice’s population today is less than 50,000 – the worst demographic point since the Black Death

No one can testify to this more than Dr. Luca Molà, an Associate Professor of the Venice programme who has called the city home his entire life. Born in its Rialto financial district in 1962, Molà is soft-spoken and well dressed. Often leaving mid-seminar for a smoke-break and a coffee, he is almost comically Italian, but would proudly call himself Venetian instead. Throughout his life, he has watched Venice transform from a run-down, overpopulated slum in the ‘60s and ‘70s – “sort of a horror film”, he says – to a premium holiday destination, but one that is increasingly losing its identity to tourists.

From 130,000 residents in 1973, Venice’s population today is less than 50,000 – the worst demographic point since the Black Death of 1348, which killed a third of the city’s population. Against this, 20 million visitors pass through Venice annually, outnumbering its residents 400 to one. At any given point, some four-fifths of those in the city do not live there. The effect on the local economy is something like a pressure-washer on traditional local business: it becomes impossible to sustain livelihoods not catered especially to tourists.

Fast-food outlets have exploded across Venice’s historic streets, peddling pizza, ice cream, and ready-made food for tourists

Molà gives the example of a bookshop in the Rialto that he says has now been turned into a place selling fake nails. Almost all the bookshops in Venice have closed, alongside less conventional outlets like cinemas: when Molà was young, there were 16 of these venues – now, just two, in a city that still hosts the Venice Film Festival, the oldest event of its kind in the world. Fast-food outlets have exploded across Venice’s historic streets, peddling pizza, ice cream, and ready-made food for tourists – every store with an identical menu. “The selection of pasta that you used to find in the shops is very limited now, because tourists don’t buy pasta,” Molà bemoans.

“We are now 49,000 official residents. When it becomes 30,000, 20,000, you start losing traditions, or they become fake traditions. And the urban identity that has existed with people coming and going, immigrants becoming local after one or two generations, is changing totally, and it’s disappearing. And it’s been one of the identities of Italians for 1000 years.”

This, Molà stresses, is not limited to Venice, but is a threat facing every historic Italian city. He names Florence, Bologna, and Lucca as examples – but it’s hard not to see Venice as an acutely severe example. Real residents are being priced out of the city entirely by the proliferation of Airbnbs – and unlike other cities, Venice has no outer periphery where they could live instead. The closest equivalent is the mainland city of Mestre, across the lagoon, whose population has ballooned to four-times that of its older neighbour.

There are 10,000 Airbnb apartments in Venice, a number that recent laws to restrict the number of flats an individual could own totally failed to mitigate

Even there, there is nothing in the way of affordable housing. Molà himself inherited three apartments from his parents, who bought them during the ‘70s slump. He rents them exclusively to young couples, or those with long-term contracts, but says that his tenants were otherwise faced with a market comprising ground-floor, windowless rooms: “Just warehouses, really, for incredible prices”. There are, he says, 10,000 Airbnb apartments in Venice, a number that recent laws to restrict the number of flats an individual could own totally failed to mitigate, because of the mayor’s refusal to implement it.

Could anything save Venice? Molà references the win for socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral election, a perhaps odd example until you consider his platform: “It’s like a dream program, to a certain extent. But among other things, he wants to put a cap on rents for flats, which sounds, for our mentality, like crazy – but there was [once]!” Similar policies in Venice, like a total freeze of the Airbnb share economy, could bring down prices and begin letting people into the city again. Otherwise, Venice, he warns, will be left “like Disneyland”.