For the inhabitants of Venice, the end of the pandemic would almost rhyme with the return of the nightmare.
After seventeen months of interruption due to Covid-19 and an unusual calm on the lagoon, a first cruise ship, the
MSC Orchestra
, pointed his nose a stone's throw from Saint Mark's Square.
Stayed moored for two days, she left on Saturday with 650 passengers on board.
The return of these giants of the seas causing a lot of nuisance did not fail to stir up controversy, even though the government had announced in March that it wanted to prohibit them from entering the historic center of the city, listed as a World Heritage Site. Unesco. The liners were, in principle, to be forced to anchor at the industrial port. A decision taken
"in order to protect a cultural and historical heritage which belongs not only to Italy, but to the whole world"
, then justified the Ministers of Culture, Tourism, Environment and Infrastructures. A solution described as
"temporary",
while a project is being studied for the creation of a new terminal outside the lagoon.
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Flash tourism bringing only few advantages, weakening of the ecosystem, erosion of the foundations of buildings: so many arguments put forward by opponents, who therefore immediately demonstrated, with banners in support. A few days earlier, a collective of international artists, including Mick Jagger and Francis Ford Coppola, had sent an open letter to the government asking for a definitive end to ship traffic. But the latter seems not to have remained insensitive to the economic arguments of the cruise supporters. The Venice works movement has given back its voice, pointing to the many jobs at stake, while the city has been severely affected by the lack of tourism, its primary resource. For now, therefore, liners will continue to rub shoulders with gondolas.