Watery rave
PetroneIla Wyatt
They came at me like a herd of cattle disgruntled by the news that the chief vet had decided to put them under the gun. I was just one and they were a legion, a legion of burly men, women and children ttying to cross the same narrow bridge as myself. It was inevitable that there would be a casualty. It was a foregone conclusion that this would be me.
There was a scuffle, a shout, the sound of unassured feet slipping on damp stone and a cry of wretched humiliation as I narrowly missed hitting the brackish water below. A woman laughed raucously, then ran on. The child in her knapsack pointed a chocolate-smeared finger at me and shouted something rude in a foreign language.
Well, hey. Being pushed off a bridge in Venice is not something that Ruskin ever warned you about. But these days, in the flawed jewel of the Adriatic, it is more likely to happen than an exhibition of Cellini or un ballo in tnaschera. The communistleaning local council has been attempting to turn Venice into a destination for mass tourism. To many locals this is as illadvised as, say, giving over the British Museum to the Ministry of Sound as a new venue.
When I went to Venice last week to visit my friend Romilly McAlpine, who lives near the Arsenale, I found the place almost unrecognisable. Great armies of people, dressed head to foot in the regulation stretch nylon, sat and lay on the stones of Venice, from the Rialto to St Mark's Square, guzzling snacks and beer. They looked like a plague of bugs fighting over food on a slab of marble. They never even glanced at the building around them.
They are day trippers who bring nothing to the city except litter and pollution. They spend no money, not even on a measly tick
et to the Doge's palace. They do buy synthetic jester's hats with bells, put them on their heads and toot paper things. They behave like soccer hooligans. It is not so much the moor of Venice as the boors of Venice.
A local woman told me, in tears, how she had her windows broken by a party of English who were too drunk to remember they were in Venice. Many of them come in on huge day-trip cruise ships that belch noxious gas into the lagoon, killing the fish. This affects the very foundations of the buildings, but this year the number of these boats will increase by 70 per cent. The mayor is encouraging them to come to Venice and turn the place into a watery rave.
It makes you wonder what the point was of all that Venice in Peril stuff. John Julius Norwich, where are you now? Water and time are nothing to what local politics is doing to the city. Recently, someone proposed a sensible idea to charge tourists a small fee to visit Venice, as it is, after all, a large museum. This would limit numbers and sift out anyone in it just for the bira. But the plan was considered too elitist. Italy has been politically corrected at last. Meanwhile two electricians will probably escape prosecution for deliberately burning down the Fenice opera house. It shows no signs of being rebuilt although the national government promised that the restoration would be complete by 2000.
Venice as one gargantuan, crapulous pub crawl was reinforced last Sunday. The authorities invited anyone from outside the city who wanted to come to a gigantic run over the bridges of Venice. There are over 300 bridges: the marathon began early in the morning and lasted all day. People were peeing in the streets because the museums had too few loos to accommodate them.
The runners, carrying knapsacks and dragging infants behind them, drank as they went and then threw the bottles and food wrappers on to the street. As suitability went, it was a bit like running a marathon through the Acropolis. The ancient bridges of Venice weren't made for such tank regiments. But the authorities loved it and plan many events like this one. I doubt that in 30 years time there will be anything left of Venice except for the whiff of Carlsberg and a few plastic wrappers.
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