"This is the nature of tourist monoculture - it drives away all the other businesses, so a local resident couldn't find a hardware store if he needed one," Davis said. "And the only shops around San Marco today are those that cater directly to tourists - there is nothing left there for the day-to-day needs of Venetians. "San Marco, like other parts of the city, has been largely emptied of the significance, symbolic or functional, that it once held in Venetian life," Davis said.
Likewise, the listòn died out sometime in the 1960s, as the crush of tourists in Piazza San Marco made it impossible for the local residents to socialize there any longer. Now, however, to accommodate the millions of tourists each year, the square has been stripped and contains nothing but the visitors who wander around, taking pictures. San Marco was also where Venetians once held their evening promenade, a beloved tradition called the "listòn" in Venice and "passeggiata" elsewhere in Italy, where residents dressed in fine clothes and walked the town square, greeting their friends and trading the latest gossip. The square was once filled with Venetians selling and buying an endless variety of goods and services, from fish to live chickens to on-the-spot dental work. For example, Piazza San Marco used to be the hub of Venetian life, where residents gathered to socialize and do business and politics. Still, it is in this area where one can best see tourism's corrosive impact on the city. "It's what one might call 'Tourist Venice,'" Davis said, "except that the entire city is by now so overrun with foreigners that you could apply the same label to the whole place." Together, these form the apexes of what the authors jokingly call the city's "Bermuda Shorts Triangle." Visitors to Venice tend to congregate around three major sites: Piazza San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, and the Accademia Gallery.
In the process, they reveal how closely tied tourism has been to all of these aspects of the city, both now and in the past. In their book, Davis and Marvin explore the workings of much that make Venice unique - its history, topography, traditions, and festivals, as well as its problems with flooding, degradation, and pollution. Moreover, while cities like New York, Paris, and London draw millions of visitors, they also have enough of their own social, cultural, and economic activity to absorb the impact of tourism - Venice doesn't," Davis said. "Venice is a most extreme example of the 'touristification' that is happening all over the world. In a sense, the book is a case study of how modern, mass tourism can transform a place, Davis said. Most of the original Venetian culture has been swept aside, replaced by a tourist "monoculture," dedicated almost entirely to serving the 13 to 14 million outsiders who descend each year on this city of only about 65,000 permanent residents. In the book, the authors argue that the Venice tourists see is hardly the historical Venice that many think they have come to experience. But as a distinct culture, as a society, I can't say that Venice still functions anymore."Īlong with Garry Marvin, an anthropologist at the University of Surrey Roehampton in England, Davis is author of the book "Venice, The Tourist Maze: A Cultural Critique of the World's Most Touristed City" (University of California Press).
"Every year Venice becomes more like an amusement park and less livable for Venetians," Davis said. It's no wonder that tourism may be killing Venice. If New York City, with its population of more than 8 million, received that many visitors per resident, the result would be more than 1.6 billion tourists flooding its streets every year. Newswise - Imagine New York City invaded by more than 1.5 billion tourists annually: what would the effect be on New Yorkers and on how they feel about their city? The question may sound far-fetched, but something analogous happens regularly in Venice, Italy, according to Robert Davis, professor of history at Ohio State University.Įvery year, Venice receives more than 200 outside visitors for every permanent inhabitant, Davis said.
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