They dreamt of Venice without tourists – but fear a nightmare

They’ve long wanted the tourists to leave, but residents of Venice are learning to be careful what you wish for.

A gondolier, at rear, transports his first customer as service resumes at the San Toma embankment on a Venice canal on May 18. Picture: AFP

The cafes along Via Garibaldi in Venice were bustling last week with gossiping drinkers who waved to shoppers at the fruit stalls and called to children zipping along the street on scooters.

The everyday scene was remarkable because not one of them was a tourist: they were all Venetians. “This is how Venice could be,” said Marco Scurati as he watched the sunset glint off his vermouth spritz.

Emerging from their coronavirus lockdown during the week, many Venetians discovered they had got what they always wanted: the disappearance of hulking cruise ships and the 50,000 daily tourists who clog up the city’s narrow alleys, drive up rents and drive out locals.

Over at Campo Santa Maria Formosa, Shaul Bassi, 50, a university professor born in Venice, was enjoying watching his son play football in the tourist-free piazza. But he was also worried.

“This is wonderful, but I am thinking about the father of my son’s schoolmate, who just invested in opening a restaurant. Will he be able to reopen?”

It is a classic case of being careful what you wish for: a Venice free of tourists means the residents are enduring a brutal downturn without the €3 billion ($5bn) the visitors pump into the economy every year.

A canal and the roads next to it are seen completely empty in Venice.

Italy may have ended its lockdown last Monday, but it will be months or even years before visitors return in numbers to Venice. Those residents who were not priced out by too many tourists may now be forced out by the lack of tourism.

Areas such as Via Garibaldi, near the tip of the island city, can survive on the trade generated by residents, but Mr Bassi said he had been frightened by the empty streets he had seen around the famed Piazza San Marco during lockdown.

“It was stunningly beautiful, but it was as if a bomb went off that wiped out people and left the buildings standing. Without visitors I realised just how few of us are left. We always dreamed of having fewer tourists, but this risks turning into a nightmare.”

Venice’s population has shrunk to 53,000 from 170,000 a century ago and many of those who are left are elderly and alone, said Marco Caberlotto, 28, who joined volunteers delivering food during the lockdown. “We found lonely pensioners you didn’t realise were there, often with a whole palazzo to themselves.”

Some Venetians have reconnected. “People would let others get ahead of them in the queue outside the supermarket so they could loiter and chat,” Mr Scurati, a marketing consultant, said. “The canals were calm and the sun setting across the empty water of the lagoon was incredible.”

A completely empty San Marco Square.

Conversation among Venetians often turns to how the city can win back tourists – but not too many. “We don’t want to survive the virus to die of tourism. We now have a brief window of opportunity to reinvent the city,” Mr Bassi said.

Calls have been made to ban tour groups and cut back on the day-trippers who make up the vast majority of visitors. Luigi Brugnaro, the Mayor, has endorsed a proposal to convince some of the 11,000 apartment owners who rent to tourists to instead focus on students, who are often forced to commute from cheaper towns on the mainland.

“We have contacted Airbnb about a deal whereby apartment owners give students a fair rent,” said a spokeswoman at IUAV, the Venice architectural college which came up with the idea.

A woman walks her dog in Venice, Italy. Venetians are rethinking their city in the quiet brought by the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Caberlotto said that the market was already adjusting. “A friend who couldn’t find anything to rent in Venice before lockdown has just been offered a two-bed place at the Arsenale in Venice for €900 a month. The owner could’ve made up to €2500 on that flat through Airbnb before the lockdown.”

The hitch is that the moment tourists do come back, renters are likely to ditch those tenants who pay less, restarting the process of depopulation.

Nursing his spritz, Mr Scurati said that apartment owners had received texts during lockdown asking if they wanted to sell up, with a link to a Chinese website.

He turned and pointed to the businesses along Via Garibaldi, many of which were still closed. “Most of those were purchased from locals by Chinese entrepreneurs, who opened restaurants and won’t bother reopening until the tourists come back,” he said.

Gondolas moored at the Riva degli Schiavoni embankment by the Doge's Palace.

Mr Bassi said that he was banking on the city’s students diluting the impact of mobs of mask-buying day-trippers when they return. Venice’s glorious past also gave him hope for the future.

“This city suffered plagues in the 16th and 17th centuries, which slashed its population, but it survived by bringing in new people,” he said.

“Plagues were also followed by explosions of art like Palladio’s Redentore church, which was built to mark the end of the first plague. There is no room to build new churches today, but more students and an economy built on culture would be a start.”

The Times