Bezos vs Venice: Will the billionaire's wedding sink the city of love?

Independent

16 hours ago

It begins, as all good fairytales do, with a $10m budget, a megayacht the size of a football pitch and a network of A-listers so starry it could alter the tides: in a few weeks, Jeff Bezos ' wedding to Lauren Sánchez is set to be a spectacle of opulence. After a five-year romance, the pair have planned an extravagant celebration in the heart of Venice, a city renowned for its timeless beauty, labyrinthine canals and centuries-old architecture. But the Adriatic city isn't swooning – far from it. In fact, the locals are absolutely seething.
One of the richest men on the planet is holding their home 'hostage', they say – to the Venetians, this isn't so much of a destination wedding but an occupation. Residents and activists say that the nuptials – and the pure extravagance planned for the celebration – are set to turn their home into a 'playground for the wealthy'.
The 'luxury footprint' – the environmental cost of the weekend in private jets and yachts contributing to Venice's already high carbon emissions – they say, will be huge; the celebrity entourage and logistical chaos they'll bring with them a perfect example of how the spirit of the city has been eroded by unchecked tourism and commercialisation, this time with the added audacity of exclusivity. The response of the locals? Widespread protests reportedly being planned to take the city by storm and attempt to mar the so-called wedding of the year.
It's not all that hard to see where they're coming from. The basics are this: reports suggest that on 24 June, billionaire Bezos and his once news anchor, now socialite fiancée, will wed on his $500m (£370m), 3,493 tonne yacht, Koru (also the tallest sailing yacht in the world).
However, reports say that views from the boat, which will be anchored in Venice lagoon, will be severely restricted – it can't be moored too far into the famous Grand Canal, because it is (you guessed it) simply too big.
The Amazon boss and Washington Post owner, who proposed to Sánchez with a $2.5m diamond ring in 2023, has also secured more or less all of the city's water taxis for guests, and Venice's most luxurious venues and hotels across the city, including the 14th century Venetian landmark, the Scuola Grande della Misericordia.
It's one of the largest and grandest buildings in Venice – and it's right in the middle of the historic city centre, much to the horror of the locals. They've also reportedly booked The Gritti Palace, Hotel Danieli, Aman Venice, Belmond Hotel Cipriani and St Regis Venice for the three-day event. Room prices at Gritti Palace and Aman Hotel start at $3,200 per night and soar up to 10 times that amount for the most extravagant suites.
Fitting for a 200-strong guest list that reads like a who's who of the global elite. Rumoured to be attending are the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Kim Kardashian, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbra Streisand, Lady Gaga and Elton John; the latter two are both expected to perform. The couple themselves are rumoured to be staying at the grand canal suite at Aman Venice, at a cost of $11,600 per night.
Of course, it was never going to be a humble gathering for Amazon's boss – a nerdy bookseller turned leather-jacket-wearing 'biohacker' famed for his cliché tech-bro lifestyle (ice baths a-plenty), phallic rocket launches and quest for immortality. To some, he's a genius innovator, a trailblazer in technology and space exploration – to others, the face of exploitative capitalism.
He's known for his spineless bootlicking when it comes to Trump – the billionaire took a front-row seat at the US president's inauguration in January – and for reportedly paying very little tax. Despite his enormous concentration of wealth, the struggle of his workers at Amazon, who have in the past been found to be working in unsafe and unethical conditions, is regularly exposed and documented.
The Venetian mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, insists that the wedding won't be that disruptive, since the city is used to hosting high-profile events, like the film festival, La Biennale di Venezia. And one report in The Times suggests that Morris Ceron, the director general of the Venice council, actively campaigned for the wedding to take place in Venice. 'Seven months ago, Domenico Dolce [co-founder of Dolce & Gabbana] told me Bezos was getting married,' he told the paper. 'I got to work to bring this marriage of the century to Venice – that's how it started.'
But as the wedding date approaches, the tension between the couple's plans for a grand celebration and the city's need for preservation is only continuing to escalate. It's an undoubtedly beautiful place, but one that's undergone profound (some would say devastating) changes over the past few decades due to mass tourism.
Away from the incredible architecture and romantic canals, littered with gondolas, Venice is in crisis, its residents say, and in danger of becoming 'Veniceland' – a city with all the charm of a museum, and none of the vitality of a real community.
Skyrocketing rents and a city packed full of holiday homes have led to a mass exodus of Venetians. For years, locals have protested against giant cruise ships carrying day-trippers (who spend very little but cause a lot of chaos) docking so close to the ancient city to stop the physical damage occurring to its fragile foundations.
And, of course, famously, Venice is literally sinking. Which, to be fair, is hard to argue with when it comes to defending a needlessly wasteful wedding for the megarich. Right now, it's slowly dropping about 1-2mm per year due to subsidence. Combined with rising sea levels, it means that Venice is facing extensive flooding threats; it now sees extreme floods every year that used to be rare.
At the centre of it all, say the protestors, is a city losing its heart to too many elite events. Of which, Bezos' tone-deaf wedding is a crowning example.
In the end, Bezos and Sánchez's wedding is a picture-perfect reflection of the broader issues at play. For the ultra-wealthy, the event is a symbol of success and exclusivity – but, as the Venetians taking to the streets rightly ask: what is the real price of prestige and cash for access?
Bezos' floating palace, mooring up in a few weeks' time, will put the tension between old-world beauty and new-world excess firmly on display. And as the world's elite raise glasses of champagne behind velvet ropes, the locals will be raising something else entirely: placards, voices and a warning from the heart of their ancient, beloved home – that cities like Venice don't belong to the richest man in the world, no matter how sparkly the ring.