Fall in love with Venice global gateways
Tourism[edit]
Venice is an important tourist destination for its celebrated art and architecture.[66]The city gets up to 60,000 tourists per day (2017 estimate). Estimates as to the annual number of tourists vary from 22 million to 30 million.[67][68][69] This 'overtourism' creates overcrowding and environmental problems in its canal ecosystem. By 2017, UNESCO was considering the addition of Venice to its "In-Danger" list, which includes historical ruins in war-torn countries. To reduce the number of visitors, who are causing irreversible changes in Venice, the agency supports limiting the number of cruise ships[70][71] as well as creating a full strategy for a more sustainable tourism.[72]
Tourism has been a major sector of Venetian industry since the 18th century, when it was a major center for the Grand Tour, with its beautiful cityscape, uniqueness, and rich musical and artistic cultural heritage. In the 19th century, it became a fashionable centre for the "rich and famous", who often stayed and dined at luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the Caffè Florian. It continued to be a fashionable city into the early 20th century.[66] In the 1980s, the Carnival of Venice was revived and the city has become a major centre of international conferences and festivals, such as the prestigious Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, which attract visitors from all over the world for their theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions.[66]
Today, there are numerous attractions in Venice, such as St Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Grand Canal, and the Piazza San Marco. The Lido di Venezia is also a popular international luxury destination, attracting thousands of actors, critics, celebrities, and mainly people in the cinematic industry. The city also relies heavily on the cruise business.[66] The Cruise Venice Committee has estimated that cruise ship passengers spend more than 150 million euros (US$193 million) annually in the city according to a 2015 report.[73] Other reports, however, point out that such day-trippers spend relatively little in the few hours of their visits to the city.[63]
Venice is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a "living museum".[66] Unlike most other places in Western Europe, and the world, Venice has become widely known for its element of elegant decay. The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made prices rise so high that numerous inhabitants are forced to move to more affordable areas of Veneto and Italy, the most notable being Mestre.
Minimising the effects of tourism[edit]
The need to balance the jobs produced by cruise tourism with the protection of the city's historic environment and fragile canals has seen the Italian Transport Ministry attempt to introduce a ban on large cruise ships visiting the city. A 2013 ban would have allowed only cruise ships smaller than 40,000-gross tons to enter the Giudecca Canal and St Mark's basin.[74] In January, a regional court scrapped the ban, but some global cruise lines indicated that they would continue to respect it until a long-term solution for the protection of Venice is found.[75]
For example, P&O Cruises removed Venice from its summer schedule, Holland America moved one of its ships from this area to Alaska and Cunard is reducing (in 2017 and further in 2018) the number of visits by its ships. As a result, the Venice Port Authority estimated an 11.4 per cent drop in cruise ships arriving in 2017 versus 2016, leading to a similar reduction in income for Venice.[76]
The city also considered a ban on wheeled suitcases, but settled on banning hard wheels for cargo from May 2015.[77]
In addition to accelerating erosion of the ancient city's foundations and creating some pollution in the lagoon,[51][78] cruise ships dropping an excessive number of day trippers can make St. Marks Square and other popular attractions too crowded to walk through during the peak season. Government officials see little value to the economy from the "eat and flee" tourists who stay for less than a day, which is typical of those from cruise ships.[79]
Having failed in its 2013 bid to ban oversized cruise ships from the Giudecca canal, the city switched to a new strategy in mid-2017, banning the creation of any additional hotels; currently, there are over 24,000 hotel rooms. (The ban does not affect short-term rentals in the historic center which is causing an increase in rent for the native residents of Venice.)[63] The city had already banned any additional fast food "take-away" outlets to retain the historic character of the city; this was another reason for freezing the number of hotel rooms.[80] Less than half the millions of annual visitors stay overnight, however.[67][68]
Some locals were aggressively lobbying for new methods that would reduce the number of cruise ship passengers; their estimate indicated that there are up to 30,000 such sightseers per day at peak periods,[69] while others concentrate their effort on promoting a more responsible way of visiting the city.[81] An unofficial referendum to ban large cruise ships was held in June 2017. More than 18,000 people voted at 60 polling booths set up by activists and 17,874 chose to favor the ban on ships from the lagoon. The population of Venice at the time was about 50,000.[79] The organizers of the referendum backed a plan to build a new cruise ship terminal at one of the three entrances to the Venetian Lagoon. Passengers would be transferred to smaller boats to take them to the historic area.[82][83] In 2014, the United Nations warned the city that it may be placed on UNESCO's list of World Heritage in Danger sites unless cruise ships are banned from the canals near the historic centre.[78]
In November 2017, an official Comitatone released a specific plan to keep the largest cruise ships away from the Piazza San Marco and the entrance to the Grand Canal. [84] Ships over 55,000 tons will be required to follow a specified path through another canal to a new passenger port to be built in Marghera, an industrial area of the mainland. According to the officials, it will take four years in total to work on the project. However, a lobby group, 'No Grandi Navi' (No big Ships), argued that the effects of pollution caused by the ships can not be diminished.[85]
In the last week of 2018, Mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced that the "overnight" tax on visitors (charged to those staying in hotels) would be extended. Every visitor to the historic centre, including day-trippers, would be required to pay the tax. The extra revenue would be used for cleaning and maintaining security, to reduce the financial burden on residents of Venice and to "allow Venetians to live with more decorum". The fee per person had not yet been set, but the mayor was considering an amount somewhere between €2.50 and €10 per person, with exemptions for a few types of travelers, including students. Since the area gets roughly 30 million visitors per year, the total revenue will be of great value.[86]
Foreign words of Venetian origin[edit]
Some words with a Venetian etymology include arsenal, ciao, ghetto, gondola, imbroglio, lagoon, lazaret, lido, Montenegro, and regatta.[87] The name "Venezuela" is a Spanish diminutive of Venice (Veneziola).[88] Many additional places around the world are named after Venice, e.g., Venice, Los Angeles, home of Venice Beach; Venice, Alberta, in Canada; Venice, Florida, a city in Sarasota County; Venice, New York.
Transportation[edit]
In the historic centre[edit]
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Venice is built on an archipelago of 118 islands[3] formed by 177 canals in a shallow lagoon, connected by 409 bridges.[89] In the old centre, the canals serve the function of roads, and almost every form of transport is on water or on foot. In the 19th century, a causeway to the mainland brought the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station to Venice, and the Ponte della Libertà road causeway and parking facilities (in Tronchetto island and in piazzale Roma) were built during the 20th century. Beyond the road and rail land entrances at the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city remains (as it was in centuries past) entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area. Venice is unique in Europe, in having remained a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
The classical Venetian boat is the gondola, (plural: gondole) although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies, or as 'traghetti' (sing.: traghetto) to cross the Canale Grande in the absence of a nearby bridge. The traghetti are operated by two oarsmen; for some years there were seven such boats but by 2017, only three remained.[90]
There are approximately 400 licensed gondoliers in Venice in their distinctive regalia and a similar number of the boats, down from 10,000 that travelled the canals two centuries ago.[91][92] Many gondolas are lushly appointed with crushed velvet seats and Persian rugs. Less well-known is the smaller sandolo. At the front of each gondola that works in the city, there is a large piece of metal called the fèro (iron). Its shape has evolved through the centuries, as documented in many well-known paintings. Its form, topped by a likeness of the Doge's hat, became gradually standardized, and was then fixed by local law. It consists of six bars pointing forward representing the Sestieri of the city, and one that points backwards representing the Giudecca.[92][93]
Waterways[edit]
Venice is a city of small islands, enhanced during the Middle Ages by the dredging of soils to raise the marshy ground above the tides. The resulting canals encouraged the flourishing of a nautical culture which proved central to the economy of the city. Today those canals still provide the means for transport of goods and people within the city.
The maze of canals threaded through the city requires the use of more than 400 bridges to permit the flow of foot traffic. In 2011, the city opened Ponte della Costituzione, the fourth bridge across the Grand Canal, connecting the Piazzale Roma bus terminal area with the Stazione Ferroviaria (train station), the others being the original Ponte di Rialto, the Ponte dell'Accademia, and the Ponte degli Scalzi.
Public transport[edit]
Azienda del Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano (ACTV) is a public company responsible for public transportation in Venice.
Lagoon area[edit]
The main public transportation means are motorised waterbuses (vaporetti) which ply regular routes along the Grand Canal and between the city's islands. The only gondole still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferriescrossing the Grand Canal at certain points without bridges. Other gondole target tourists on an hourly basis.[92]
The Venice People Mover (managed by ASM) is a cable-operated public transitsystem connecting Tronchetto island with Piazzale Roma. Water taxis are also active.
Lido and Pellestrina islands[edit]
Lido and Pellestrina are two islands forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. In those islands, road traffic is allowed. There are bus services on islands and waterbus services linking islands with other islands (Venice, Murano, Burano) and with the peninsula of Cavallino-Treporti.
Mainland[edit]
The mainland of Venice is composed of 5 boroughs: Mestre-Carpenedo, Marghera, Chirignago-Zelarino and Favaro Veneto. Mestre is the center and the most populated urban area of the mainland of Venice. There are several bus routes and two Translohr tramway lines. Several bus routes and one of the above tramway lines link the mainland with Piazzale Roma, the main bus station in Venice, via Ponte della Libertà, a road bridge connecting the mainland with the group of islands that comprise the historic center of Venice. The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Venice, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 52 min. 12.2% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 10 min, while 17.6% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 7 km, while 12% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.[94]
Trains[edit]
Venice has regional and national trains, including trains to Florence (1h53), Rome (3h33), Naples (4h50), Milan (2h13) and Turin (3h10). In addition there are international day trains to Zurich, Innsbruck, Munich and Vienna, plus overnight sleeper services to Paris and Dijon (Thello), Munich and Vienna (ÖBB).
- The St Lucia station is a few steps away from a vaporetti stop in the historic city next to Piazzale Roma. As well as many more local trains, this station is the terminus of the luxury Venice Simplon Orient Express from Paris and London.
- The Mestre station is on the mainland, on the border between the boroughs of Mestre and Marghera.
Both stations are managed by Grandi Stazioni; they are linked by the Ponte della Libertà (Liberty Bridge) between the mainland and the islands.
Others small stations in the municipality are Venezia Porto Marghera, Venezia Carpenedo, Venezia Mestre Ospedale, Venezia Mestre Porta Ovest.
Ports[edit]
The Port of Venice (Italian: Porto di Venezia) is the eighth-busiest commercial port in Italy and is one of the most important in the Mediterranean concerning the cruise sector, as a major hub for cruise ships. It is one of the major Italian ports and is included in the list of the leading European ports which are located on the strategic nodes of trans-European networks. In 2006, 30,936,931 tonnes passed through the port, of which 14,541,961 was the commercial sector, and saw 1,453,513 passengers. In 2002, the port handled 262,337 containers.[95]
Airports[edit]
Venice is served by the Marco Polo International Airport (Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo), named in honor of its noted citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast. Public transport from the airport takes one to:
- Venice Piazzale Roma by ATVO (provincial company) buses[96] and by ACTV (city company) buses (route 5 aerobus);[97]
- Venice, Lido and Murano by Alilaguna (private company) motor boats;
- Mestre, the mainland and Venice Mestre railway station (convenient for connections to Milan, Padova, Trieste, Verona and the rest of Italy) by ACTV lines (route 15 and 45)[97] and by ATVO lines;
- regional destinations (Treviso, Padua, the beach, ...) by ATVO buses and by Busitalia Sita Nord[98] buses (national company).
Some airlines market Treviso Airport in Treviso, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Venice, as a Venice gateway. Some simply advertise flights to "Venice", while naming the actual airport only in small print.[99] There are public buses from this airport to Venice.
Venezia-Lido "Giovanni Nicelli",[100] a public airport suitable for smaller aircraft, is at the NE end of Lido di Venezia. It has a 994-metre grass runway.
Culture[edit]
Literature[edit]
Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, playwrights, and poets, and at the forefront of the technological development of printing and publishing.
Two of the most noted Venetian writers were Marco Polo in the Middle Ages and later Giacomo Casanova. Polo (1254–1324) was a merchant who voyaged to the Orient. His series of books, co-written by Rustichello da Pisa and titled Il Milione provided important knowledge of the lands east of Europe, from the Middle East to China, Japan, and Russia. Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a prolific writer and adventurer best remembered for his autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie (Story of My Life), which links his colourful lifestyle to the city of Venice.
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Venetian playwrights followed the old Italian theatre tradition of Commedia dell'arte. Ruzante (1502–1542), Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), and Carlo Gozzi(1720–1806) used the Venetian dialect extensively in their comedies.
Venice has also inspired writers from abroad. Shakespeare set Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the city, as did Thomas Mann with his novel, Death in Venice(1912). The French writer Philippe Sollers spent most of his life in Venice and published A Dictionary For Lovers of Venice in 2004.
The city features prominently in Henry James' The Aspern Papers and The Wings of the Dove. It is also visited in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Perhaps the most known children's book set in Venice is The Thief Lord, written by the German author Cornelia Funke.
The poet Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), born in Zante, an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was also a revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following its fall to Napoleon.
Venice also inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound, who wrote his first literary work in the city. Pound died in 1972, and his remains are buried in Venice's cemetery island of San Michele.
Venice is also linked to the technological aspects of writing. The city was the location of one of Italy's earliest printing presses, established by Aldus Manutius (1449–1515).[citation needed] From this beginning Venice developed as an important typographic center and even as late as the 18th century was responsible for printing half of Italy's published books.[citation needed]
In literature and adapted works[edit]
The city is a particularly popular setting for essays, novels, and other works of fictional or non-fictional literature. Examples of these include:
- Casanova's autobiographical History of My Life,
- Ben Jonson's Volpone (1605–6),
- Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti crime fiction series and cookbook, and the German television series based on the novels
- Anne Rice's Cry to Heaven (1982),
- Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Chosen (historical fantasy or alternate history) A large portion of the novel takes place in a city known as La Serenissima. It is an alternative-history version of Venice, complete with masquerades, canals and a Doge.
- Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (ca. 1596–1598) and Othello,
- Philippe Sollers' Watteau in Venice, and
- Voltaire's Candide.
- Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities.
Additionally, Thomas Mann's novella, Death in Venice (1912), was the basis for Benjamin Britten's eponymous opera.
Art and printing[edit]
Venice, especially during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and Baroque periods, was a major centre of art and developed a unique style known as the Venetian School. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice, along with Florence and Rome, became one of the most important centres of art in Europe, and numerous wealthy Venetians became patrons of the arts. Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic, which controlled a vast sea and trade empire.[121]
Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style, the most prominent of which is the Gothic style. Venetian Gothic architecture is a term given to a Venetian building style combining the use of the Gothic lancet arch with Byzantine and Ottoman influences. The style originated in 14th-century Venice, where the confluence of Byzantine style from Constantinople met Arab influence from Islamic Spain. Chief examples of the style are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro in the city. The city also has several Renaissance and Baroque buildings, including the Ca' Pesaro and the Ca' Rezzonico.
By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become the European capital of printing, being one of the first cities in Italy (after Subiaco and Rome) to have a printing press after those established in Germany, having 417 printers by 1500. The most important printing office was the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius, which in 1499 printed the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance, and established modern punctuation, the page format and italic type, and the first printed work of Aristotle.
In the 16th century, Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of the Van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters were the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgioneand Titian, then Tintoretto and Veronese. In the early 16th century, there was rivalry in Venetian painting between the disegno and colorito techniques.[122]
Canvases (the common painting surface) originated in Venice during the early Renaissance. These early canvases were generally rough.
In the 18th century, Venetian painting had a revival with Tiepolo's decorative painting and Canaletto's and Guardi's panoramic views.
Fashion and shopping[edit]
In the 14th century, many young Venetian men began wearing tight-fitting multicoloured hose, the designs on which indicated the Compagnie della Calza ("Trouser Club") to which they belonged. The Venetian Senate passed sumptuary laws, but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colourful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colours resulting in the wide spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
Today, Venice is a major fashion and shopping centre, not as important as Milan, Florence, and Rome, but on a par with Verona, Turin, Vicenza, Naples, and Genoa. Roberta di Camerino is the only major Italian fashion brand to be based in Venice.[140] Founded in 1945, it is renowned for its innovative handbags featuring hardware[clarification needed] by Venetian artisans and often covered in locally woven velvet, and has been credited with creating the concept of the easily recognisable status bag.[140] Many of the fashion boutiques and jewelry shops in the city are located on or near the Rialto Bridge and in the Piazza San Marco. There are Louis Vuitton and Ermenegildo Zegna flagship stores in the city. If shopping for Venetian and Italian food specialties and wine you can head to Mascari or Casa del Parmigiano near Rialto and I Tre Mercanti flagship store near Piazza San Marco.
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