Join Condé Nast Traveler’s Skye McAlpine in Venice as she explores the impact of overtourism on this iconic city and meets the locals working to protect it. From the art of hand-blown Murano glass to vineyards growing flood-resistant grapes in the Venetian lagoon, discover the innovative and passionate efforts of Venetians preserving their culture, history, and environment–and learn how to be a more responsible traveler.
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00:00This is Venice. It's the city where I was raised and have lived for over 35 years.
00:08But there's a significant problem facing Venice. Over tourism. Over 5.7 million tourists traveled
00:16to Venice last year. That is three times more tourists than residents on average per day.
00:21Over tourism can add to high housing costs, infrastructure strain and the loss of local
00:27residents and culture. I've seen tourism transform my city and I'm going to find out what Venice is
00:34at risk of losing and meet three local businesses who are keeping Venice alive.
00:42But first I'm headed to the Dorsoduro neighborhood where you can still buy produce from a boat like
00:47back in the old days. The city of Venice is made up of over 120 small islands with at least 170
00:57canals connected by over 400 bridges and that means that life here is a bit different from other places.
01:07I'm meeting Matteo Secchi, a lifelong Venetian activist at Osteria al Squaro for an espresso.
01:16We lose 20 inhabitants per week. We are not a city anymore, we are like a small village.
01:23Venice was one of the biggest cities of Europe in the middle age. After Paris and Naples,
01:29Venice was the most populated. The city has changed because there's less Venetians every day
01:36and more tourists. The balance is different. What are your favorite things about Venice?
01:42No cars and our simple life. We drink, we eat something and we talk.
01:49The restaurant overlooks Squaro di Centrovaso, a boatyard for gondolas. Only a handful of squarei
01:56are left in Venice. We like every kind of culture but we don't want to lose our culture and the
02:03Squaro is part of our culture. This is one of the last ones of the city. What happens at the Squaro?
02:08They built the gondolas and the gondolas is a symbol of Venice. The tourists, if they love Venice,
02:14they have to help us protect Venice. The invitation to the tourists is to go behind the postcard and get
02:25lost in the city because there's a lot of things you can discover and love it.
02:30A maestro, I would say, is like a conductor of an orchestra. My father says a jazz band
02:48because they improvise more. Elena and Margherita Micheluzzi are two sisters who left Venice but
02:54returned to keep their father's glassblowing legacy alive. But the Venetian glassblower is a species
03:00in extinction. In reality it's always a team. It's the maestro and two assistants. They dance around
03:08the blowing pipe and glass and they switch positions. We're glass designers and we work with artisans in
03:16Murano. We work in a furnace with a group of artisans and they are the real makers of glass and our
03:24father has been working like this also since 25 years. But there are few artisans compared to the
03:31number of the ones that are retiring. The cost of gas, the fact that it's a very labor intensive job and
03:39like it's not being passed on as it was before from father to son. It's a world that it's shrinking,
03:45but there is a lot of attention and consciousness. So there is a way to preserve it.
03:52To keep it alive. To keep it alive.
03:56Tourists are really curious and they ask us a lot about the making of glass. Many people say there's
04:02like just the typical touristic little souvenirs, but there's not much artistic glass. So we like to
04:09stand out and show that you can do in Murano things that are not what you would expect.
04:14How can you tell real hand blown glass from Murano versus many of the versions out there?
04:23On glassware, for example, you can tell from this little thing here, which is the blowpipe.
04:28The term that they use in Murano, it's opened by hand.
04:32See, that's so interesting because I think if you didn't know, you might think that was a defect.
04:36Another thing that you can see, it's when you don't have like a cut edge.
04:41It's smooth, but a little bit uneven.
04:44You can see it better here. The signature.
04:47The name and the date as well, because each piece is unique.
04:53We have to learn still, like it's five years that we started. So we hope
04:59that we will be able to carry on doing it.
05:09Up the street, Sara Maestrelli runs a hotel committed to keeping Venetian craftsmanship alive.
05:16Sara, tell me a bit about the philosophy behind the design.
05:20We started thinking about the history of Venice and the fact that often a tourist will come to
05:24Venice, spend one night and kind of leave with a sensation that Venice is an amusement park stuck
05:30in the 17th century. And that's just not true about Venice. And so we really wanted to celebrate
05:35Venice, even though we're a small hotel, in all of its eras. And what came out is kind of this
05:41eclectic mix of time periods. For example, this lady next to the Fenice Theatre makes these adorable
05:49keychains. We ended up doing a collaboration and doing custom keychains for violino.
05:54Oh, I love that.
05:55Pretty, yeah. Want to go see your room?
05:58I would love to.
06:03This is probably the room I love the most.
06:08The most special thing for a Venetian is to hop on an altana and have a privileged view of the city,
06:17right? The altane, which are the wooden terraces that Venetians built on their rooftops.
06:22I feel this room is like a little altana that you can sleep in and have this 360 degree view
06:29almost of the rooftops. You couldn't be anywhere else in the world.
06:32I really couldn't be.
06:35Venice is a city that deserves to be seen and loved and admired, but it also deserves
06:41time. It's very often lived as a touch and go city. So a lot of the tourists that come to Venice think
06:48just coming, staying for a day, kind of checking that off the list. But that is no way of really
06:53getting in touch with the true Venice and the magic of Venice. What is important for the city,
06:58but also for the traveller that is visiting the city, is to dedicate it some time.
07:03The city of Venice, with its flood of crowds, is perched precariously on the Venetian Lagoon,
07:14where the looming threat of actual floods has been staved off by a seawall called Mose.
07:21Venice has one of the world's most cutting edge flood technologies. That took five billion dollars
07:27and almost 20 years to build. A network of 78 gates, located at the inlets of the Venetian Lagoon,
07:35rise from the seabed when an extremely high tide is predicted. Experts estimated that the Mose flood
07:42walls would be raised about five times a year. But in the past two years, the walls have already been
07:48raised 49 times. I'm meeting Matteo Bizzol, the winemaker at Venisa vineyards on the island of
07:56Mazzorpo, where they are making wine from an ancient flood-resistant vine.
08:02So welcome to Venisa. Thank you, what a treat to be here. This is a very special vineyard.
08:07We are in the middle of the Lagoon of Venice. We are just half an hour from the city,
08:12but actually in the past, from here to Venice, it used to be three hour rowing.
08:16So the culture of these islands is very different from the culture of Venice itself. It's a different
08:21wild, right? Yes. Do you know that also in St Mark's Square, in the year 1100, there was a vineyard?
08:26No way. Yeah. The history of Venisa started in 2001, when my father was visiting the island of
08:33Torcello and he noticed that inside a private garden there were a few vines. So we discovered
08:39that Dorona, this great variety, with a unique DNA that was almost disappeared. So we took the cuttings
08:46and we were able to replant this vineyard in 2006. We are used to think that the vines
08:52need to go deeper in the soil, but the vine is very smart. So in this case, the roots are spreading
08:59very horizontally and we live in the first part of the surface of the soil. So it's very shallow,
09:04the roots are very shallow. Yes. This is the type of soil that we have at Venisa. Look, so the plants
09:10are actually digging. In amongst shells. Yes. These are all shells of oysters, all this. And yet the
09:18grapes survive. Yes, because they adapted themselves for the centuries to survive exactly in this
09:24environment. And this is actually what makes the terroir and then the wine of Venisa so special.
09:31Amazing. So now it's time to go and taste this wine. Fantastic. Music to my ears.
09:40So these are the cicchetti from our Osteria Contemporane, which is the bistro we have here
09:46at Venisa. And it's a reinterpretation of the traditional cicchetti of Venice that are smaller bites
09:52that usually you pair with the wine because we don't pair wine with the food. We pair food with wine.
09:58This is a good example. This is the largemouth bus. It's similar to sea bus. We call it Boccalone.
10:06It's an invasive species of the Lagoon of Venice. Two years ago, we decided to focus only on this
10:12invasive species because we want people to learn to eat what is actually threatening.
10:18But I'm also very excited to try the wine. Yes. This is the Venisa. Cheers.
10:24Right. It's very interesting. It's very different from anything else. It's very elegant. It has a
10:32very unique character because actually this is a very unique vineyard. Have you ever seen a vineyard
10:37like that? No. This is the effect of a salt which is in the soil which is creating this difference.
10:43Can you tell me about the bottle? Because it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
10:48This is a gold leaf that is made in Venice by the family Berta Battiloro that they are hand beating
10:55the gold leaf and then in Murano is actually baked into the glass by another handcrafter family.
11:04That Micheluzzi glass they engraved in the same way. This is in our tradition of Venice.
11:09So what's more precious? The bottle or the wine? For me always the wine.
11:14Always the wine. For me always the wine.
11:17And I hear visitors to the vineyard can now actually stay on the island of Burano.
11:21Casa Burano. It's a different model which is really interesting for Italy's small villages.
11:26There's no big buildings. There are all small houses and we have 13 rooms. So in five different
11:32houses around the village. So we don't want the tourists to be all in the same building with the
11:38tourists but we want to be more of a mix and integrated in the local environment of Burano.
11:46There is a certain type of tourism that is actually helping Venice to keep its tradition alive. That
11:53is thanks to tourists that are still using the gondola that exists the last square in Venice.
11:59The tradition of building the gondola is still alive. And the same with our wines,
12:05with the gold beaters, with the Murano hand crafters. I really think that people that are choosing a
12:13certain type of Venice and a certain type of tourism are actually keeping this city alive.