We’ve all seen the pictures of people cruising around in gondolas beaming ear to ear, but underneath all those great holiday snaps Venice is a city boiling over with tension.

Just the numbers alone make it obvious that it was a ticking time bomb – 55 000 residents dealing with a daily influx of around 70 000 tourists. That’s good news for some local businesses that cater to their needs, but over the years it has gradually left locals more and more disgruntled.

This has left locals feeling like a bit of an afterthought to business owners, and tensions have really escalated with the arrival of massive cruise ships.

The Telegraph with more:

These days, this resentment boils over most visibly in boisterous waterborne protests against massive cruise ships, 521 of which dwarfed the Doge’s palace en route to Venice’s passenger terminal in 2015.

But while 10 monsters per week stirring up the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem is a massive environmental problem, they disgorged ‘just’ 1.8 million passengers into Venice’s tiny centro – a small proportion of a total greater than 25 million, according to local tourist board figures.

The roots of bad feeling between Venice and its visitors arguably lie elsewhere, in inadequate infrastructure and lack of strategic planning in the tourism sector.

Venetians are riled when their favourite café is packed out by people queuing for the bathroom, not realising that those 70,000 daily visitors must make do with just eight public toilets in the centre of Venice, almost all of which close at 7pm.

They remonstrate with tourists picnicking on bridges or in squares – something which can get you a €50 fine – but budget-conscious travellers will struggle to find a park bench where they can take the edge off their hunger.

If you’re looking at this and thinking property prices have to feature somewhere then well done, you’ve earned a gold star. Prices, which were already sky-high due to limited supply, have rocketed further and lower-paid workers are now being forced out of the city.

In addition, fast food cafes and chain stores are gradually replacing local businesses, and whilst they provide familiarity for the hordes of tourists they all contribute to a city suffering a loss of identity.

A little snapshot of just how enraged some of the city’s longer-standing residents have become:

Venetians, especially those who aren’t involved in the sector, moan that it’s tourists who are ruining the city, according to [Luisella Romeo, a registered Venetian guide]. “A colleague of mine was leading a big group down an alley when suddenly an old Venetian lady ran at her, shouting, brandishing an umbrella. She had to fend her off with the stick she was holding aloft to keep her group together. It became a kind of fencing match”…

“The city’s on the verge of collapse,” [resident Michela Scibilia] says, “and drastic decisions need to be taken. But even to tourists, Venice makes no sense without inhabitants.” What’s needed is a policy to reconcile the two.

And you thought Cape Town in December and January was bad…

[source:telegraph]