How Overtourism is Sinking Venice
[Narrator] This is Venice.
It's the city where I was raised
and have lived for over 35 years.
But there's a significant problem
facing Venice, over tourism.
Over 5.7 million tourists traveled to Venice last year,
about as three times more tourists
than residents on average per day.
Over-tourism can add to high housing costs,
infrastructure strain
and the loss of local residents and culture.
I've seen tourism transform my city
and I'm going to find out what Venice is at risk of losing
and meet three local businesses
who are keeping Venice alive.
[upbeat music]
But first I'm headed to the Dorsoduro neighborhood
where you can still buy produce from a boat
like back in the old days.
The city of Venice is made up of over 120 small islands
with at least 170 canals connected by over 400 bridges.
And that means that life here
is a bit different from other places.
I'm meeting Matteo Secchi, a lifelong Venetian activist
at El Squero for espresso.
Two coffee please.
So we lose 20 habitants per week.
We are not a city anymore, we are like a small village.
Venice was one of the biggest city
of Europe in the Middle Age.
After Paris and Naples, Venice was the most populated.
The city is changed
because there's less Venetians every day and more tourists.
The balance is different.
[Narrator] What are your favorite things about Venice?
No cars and our simple life.
We drink, we eat something and we talk.
[Narrator] The restaurant overlooks Squero di San Trovaso,
a boatyard for gondolas.
Only a handful of Squeri are left in Venice.
We like every kind of culture,
but we don't wanna lose our culture
and the Squero is part of our culture.
This is one of the last one of the city.
[Narrator] What happens at the Squero?
They build the gondolas
and the gondolas is a symbol of Venice.
The tourists, if they love Venice,
they have to help us protect Venice.
The invitation to the tourists
is go behind the postcard and get lost in the city
because there's a lot of things
you can discover and love it.
[upbeat music]
A maestro, I would say
is like a conductor of an orchestra.
My father says a jazz band
because they improvise more.
[Narrator] Elena and Margherita Micheluzzi
are two sisters who left Venice but returned
to keep their father's glass blowing legacy alive.
But the Venetian glassblower is a species and extinction.
In reality, it's always a team.
It's the maestro and two assistants.
They dance around the blowing pipe and glass
and they switch positions.
We're glass designers and we work with artisans in Murano.
We work with in a furnace with a group of artisans
and they are the real makers of glass.
And our father has been working
like this also since 25 years.
But there are few artisans compared to the number
of the ones that are retiring.
The cost of gas,
the fact that it's a very labor intensive job
and like it's not being passed on
as it was before from father to son.
It's a world that it's shrinking,
but there is a lot of attention and consciousness.
So there is a way to preserve it.
To keep it alive.
To keep it alive.
Tourists are really curious
and they ask us a lot about the making of glass.
Many people say there's like just a typical
touristic little souvenirs,
but there's not much artistic glass.
So we like to stand out
and show that you can do in Murano
things that are not what you would expect.
[Narrator] How can you tell
real hand-blown glass from Murano
versus many of the versions out there?
On glassware, for example,
you can tell from this little thing here,
which is the blow pipe, the term that they use
in Murano it's open by hand.
[Narrator] See that's so interesting
because I think if you didn't know,
you might think that was a defect.
[Elena] Another thing that you can see,
it's when you don't have like a cut edge.
It's smooth, but a little bit uneven.
[Narrator] You can see it better here, the signature.
[Elena] The name and the date as well.
[Narrator] 'Cause each piece is unique.
[Elena] We have to learn still,
like it's five years that we started,
so we hope that we will be able to carry on doing it.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] Up the street,
Sara Maestrelli runs a hotel
committed to keeping Venetian craftsmanship alive.
Sara, tell me a bit about the philosophy behind the design.
We start thinking about the history of Venice
and the fact that often a tourist will come to Venice,
spend one night and kind of leave with a sensation
that Venice is an amusement park stuck in the 17th century
and that's just not true about Venice.
And so we really wanted to celebrate Venice,
even though we're a small hotel,
in all of its eras.
And what came out is kind of this eclectic mix
of time periods.
For example, this lady next to the theater
makes these adorable key chains.
We ended up doing a collaboration
and doing custom key chains for.
Oh, I love that.
Pretty, yeah, wanna go see your room?
[Narrator] I would love to.
[upbeat music]
This is probably the room I love the most.
The most special thing for a Venetian
is to hop on an Altane
and have a privileged view of the city.
The Altane, which are the wooden terraces
that Venetians built on their rooftops.
I feel this room is like a little Altane
that you can sleep in
and have this 360 degree view almost
of the rooftops.
[Narrator] You couldn't be anywhere else in the world.
You really couldn't be.
Venice is a city that deserves to be seen and loved
and admired, but it also deserves time.
It's very often lived as a touch and go a city.
So a lot of the tourists that come to Venice
think just coming, staying for a day,
kind of checking that off the list.
But that is no way of really getting in touch
with the true Venice and the magic of Venice.
What is important for the city,
but also for the traveler that is visiting the city,
is to dedicate it some time.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] The city of Venice with its flood of crowds
is perched precariously on the Venetian lagoon
where the looming fret of actual floods has been staved off
by a sea wall called MOSE.
Venice has one of the world's most cutting edge
flood technologies that took $5 billion
and almost 20 years to build.
A network of 78 gates located at the inlets
of the Venetian lagoon rise from the seabed
when an extremely high tide is predicted.
Experts estimated that the MOSE flood walls
would be raised about five times a year,
but in the past two years,
the walls have already been raised 49 times.
I'm meeting Matteo Bisol,
the wine maker at Venezia Vineyards
on the island of Mazzorbo
where they are making wine
from an ancient flood resistant vine.
So welcome to Venezia.
Thank you, what a treat to be here.
This is a very special vineyard.
We are in the middle of the Laguna Venice.
We are just half an hour from the city,
but actually in the past, from here to Venice,
it used to be three hour rowing.
So the culture of these islands is very different
from the culture of Venice itself.
[Narrator] It's a different world.
Yes.
Do you know that also in San Marc Square,
in the year 1,100, there was a vineyard.
No way.
Yeah, the history of Venezia
started in 2001 when my father was visiting
the island of Torcello
and he noticed that inside a private garden
there were few vines.
So we discovered that Dorona, this gray variety
with a unique DNA that was almost disappeared.
So we took the cuttings
and we were able to replant this vineyard in 2006.
We used to think that the vines need to go deeper.
[Narrator] Yeah.
In the soil, but the vine is very smart,
so in this case, the roots are spreading very horizontally
and we live in the first part of the surface of the soil.
So it's very shallow.
The roots are very shallow.
Yes, this is the type of soil that we have at Venezia.
Look, so the plants are actually digging.
[Narrator] In amongst shells.
These are all shells of oysters, all these.
[Narrator] And yet the grapes survive.
[Speaker] Yes, because they adapted themselves
for the centuries to survive exactly in this environment.
And this is actually what makes the
and then the wine of Venezia so special.
[Narrator] Amazing.
[upbeat music]
So now it's time to go and taste this wine.
Fantastic, music to my ears.
[liquid pouring]
So these are the Cicchetti from our.
[speaking in foreign language]
Which is the bistro we have here at Venezia.
And it's the interpretation
of the traditional Cicchetti of Venice
that are smaller bites that usually you pair with the wine
because we don't pair wine with the food.
Other way around.
This is a good example.
This is the large mouth bass is similar to sea bass.
We call it Boccalone.
It's an invasive species of the Laguna Venice.
A few years ago we decided to focus
only on this invasive species
because we want people to learn to eat
what is actually frightening.
[Narrator] I'm also very excited to try the wine.
Yes.
This is the Venusa, cheers.
It's very interesting.
It's very different from anything else.
It's very elegant, it has a very unique character
because actually this is a very unique vineyard.
Have you ever seen a vineyard like that?
No.
[Speaker] This is the effect of salt which is in the soil,
which is creating this difference.
Can you tell me about the bottle?
Because it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
This is a gold leaf that is made in Venice
by the family Berta Battiloro.
That they are hand beating the gold leaf
and then in Murano is actually baked
into the glass by another handcrafter family.
[Narrator] That Micalusi glass
they engrave in the same way.
[Speaker] This is in our tradition of events.
So what's more precious, the bottle or the wine?
[Speaker] For me, always the wine.
[Narrator] Always the wine.
[Speaker] For me always the wine.
[upbeat music]
[Narrator] And I hear visitors to the vineyard
can now actually stay on the island of Burano.
Casa Burano, it's a different model,
which is really interesting for Italy
small villages, there's no big buildings.
There are all small houses
and we have 13 rooms, so in five different houses
around the village.
So we don't want the tourists to be all in the same building
with the tourists, but we want to be more of a mix
and integrated in the local environment of Burano.
There is a certain type of tourism
that is actually helping Venice to keep its tradition alive.
That is thanks to tourists that are still using the gondola
that existed, the last square Squero in Venezia.
The tradition of building the gondola is still alive.
And the same with our wines, with the gold beaters,
with the Murano hand crafters.
I really think that people that are choosing
a certain type of Venice and a certain type of tourism
are actually keeping this city alive.
[upbeat music]
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