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In 2019, the Italian city of Venice began to take drastic steps to counter overtourism.

The city was besieged by visitors from cruise ships, as well as day-trippers, and Venetians complained that neither they nor the visiting masses could properly appreciate the city’s beauty under those conditions.

After being decimated by an early surge of COVID-19, Italian tourism has slowly recovered, with pictures showing visitors returning to enjoy Venice, albeit in far smaller numbers than before.

For those keen on enjoying a gondola ride, however, now is not the time to visit, with sections of the canals left almost completely dry after exceptionally low tides.

Yahoo! News reports:

Traditional gondolas and boats could be seen almost beached in the canals as water levels reached a peak of -48 cm, creating an unusual landscape in the lagoon city.

Venice, beloved around the world for its canals, historic architecture and art, has always lived in a fragile balance between low and high tides, that usually create variations of around 50 cm in sea levels.

You can chalk this one off the bucket list until the tides rise, then:

Not ideal.

Just one of the perks of Cape Town’s kayak tours – low tide can’t stop them.

For the Venice lovers, I guess you’ll have to live vicariously through a virtual tour, with the video below traversing 27 kilometres of the city’s canals:

[source:yahoonews]