Can
We Save Venice Before It’s Too Late?
By SALVATORE SETTIS
August 29, 2016
PISA, Italy — A
deadly plague haunts Venice, and it’s not the cholera to which
Thomas Mann’s character Gustav von Aschenbach succumbed in the
Nobel laureate’s 1912 novella “Death in Venice.” A rapacious
tourist monoculture threatens Venice’s existence, decimating the
historic city and turning the Queen of the Adriatic into a Disneyfied
shopping mall.
Millions of tourists
pour into Venice’s streets and canals each year, profoundly
altering the population and the economy, as many native citizens are
banished from the island city and those who remain have no choice but
to serve in hotels, restaurants and shops selling glass souvenirs and
carnival masks.
Tourism is tearing
apart Venice’s social fabric, cohesion and civic culture, growing
ever more predatory. The number of visitors to the city may rise even
further now that international travelers are avoiding destinations
like Turkey and Tunisia because of fears of terrorism and unrest.
This means that the 2,400 hotels and other overnight accommodations
the city now has no longer satisfy the travel industry’s appetites.
The total number of guest quarters in Venice’s historic center
could reach 50,000 and take it over entirely.
Just along the Grand
Canal, Venice’s main waterway, the last 15 years have seen the
closure of state institutions, judicial offices, banks, the German
Consulate, medical practices and stores to make way for 16 new
hotels.
Alarm at this state
of affairs led to last month’s decision by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to place Venice on
its World Heritage in Danger list unless substantial progress to halt
the degradation of the city and its ecosystem is made by next
February. Unesco has so far stripped only one city of its status as a
heritage site from the more than 1,000 on the list: Dresden, after
German authorities ignored Unesco’s 2009 recommendations against
building a bridge over the River Elbe that marred the Baroque urban
ensemble. Will Venice be next to attain this ignominious status?
In its July report,
Unesco’s committee on heritage sites expressed “extreme concern”
about “the combination of ongoing transformations and proposed
projects threatening irreversible changes to the overall relationship
between the City and its Lagoon,” which would, in its thinking,
erode the integrity of Venice.
Unesco’s ultimatum
stems from several longstanding problems. First, the increasing
imbalance between the number of the city’s inhabitants (which
plummeted from 174,808 in 1951 to 56,311 in 2014, the most recent
year for which numbers are available) and the tourists. Proposed
large-scale development, including new deepwater navigation channels
and a subway running under the lagoon, would hasten erosion and
strain the fragile ecological-urban system that has grown up around
Venice.
For now, gigantic
cruise liners regularly parade in front of Piazza San Marco, the
city’s main public square, mocking the achievements of the last
1,500 years. To mention but one, the M.S.C. Divina is 222 feet high,
twice as tall as the Doge’s Palace, a landmark of the city that was
built in the 14th century. At times, a dozen liners have entered the
lagoon in a single day.
The inept response
of the Italian authorities to the very real problems facing Venice
gives little hope that this situation will change anytime soon. After
the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia in January 2012 off the coast of
Tuscany left 32 people dead, the Italian government ruled that
megaships must stay at least two miles from shore to prevent similar
occurrences in the future. But the Italian government, predictably,
failed to stand up to the big money promised by the tourist
companies: A loophole to that law was created just for Venice. A
cruise liner running ashore in the Piazza San Marco would wreck
centuries of irreplaceable history.
Furthermore, after a
corruption scandal over a multibillion-dollar lagoon barrier project
forced Mayor Giorgio Orsoni to resign in June 2014, he was replaced a
year later by Luigi Brugnaro, a booster of Venice’s tourism. Mr.
Brugnaro not only fully welcomes the gargantuan ships but has even
proposed the sale of millions of dollars of art from the city’s
museums to help manage Venice’s ballooning debt.
The destruction of
Venice is not in Italy’s best interest, yet the authorities remain
paralyzed. Local authorities — the city and the region — are at
odds with the government in Rome. Regardless, they have failed to
diversify the city’s economy, meaning that any changes would put
the few remaining Venetians out of work. To renew Venice’s economic
life, new policies are strongly needed, aimed at encouraging young
people to stay in the historic city, encouraging manufacturing and
generating opportunities for creative jobs — from research to
universities and the art world — while reutilizing vacant
buildings.
No effective
provision on Venice’s behalf has been enforced so far by the
Ministry of Cultural Heritage, although protection of environment and
cultural heritage is among the fundamental principles of the Italian
Constitution. Nor are authorities developing any project whatsoever
aimed not just at preserving the monuments of Venice, but at ensuring
its citizens a future worth living.
If Italy is to spare
Venice from further violation by the new plague devouring its beauty
and collective memory, it must first review its overall priorities
and, abiding by its own Constitution, place cultural heritage,
education and research before petty business.
Salvatore Settis is
the chairman of the Louvre Museum’s scientific advisory council and
the author of the forthcoming book “If Venice Dies.”
If you’ve visited
Venice or another historical site this summer and found it in need of
repair, care or conservation, we’d like to see your view of it,
taken from a unique angle. Post on Instagram using the hashtag
#OurHeritageInDanger.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário