Venice inundated

I touched on the problem of large cruise ships invading Venice once before.  These floating multi-story hotels, crowding into the Giudecca Canal, bringing thousands of passengers up close to the Doge's Palace and the Campanile in Piazza San Marco, are part of a larger complex of issues connected to how to save the city from tourism and from rising sea waters.  

© Andrea Pattaro/AFP

 Anna Somers Cocks, in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books, discusses all of this.  It's an excellent and unsettling article.

In 1987, Italy sought, and was granted, designation of Venice as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  As part of the designation agreement, Italy promised to develop and implement a management plan for the city and a buffer zone around it.  The French chateaux in the Loire Valley are protected by such a plan.  Only in November of last year did the Venice City Council publish a plan, 25 years after the original World Heritage designation.  Cocks, a former chairman of the Venice in Peril Fund and now the editor of The Art Newspaper, is deeply critical of what they produced for failing to address the critical threats to Venice.  Without significant changes in governance and political will, she fears that the city will be overwhelmed by tourists and rising sea water.