The Disappearing City

It was a Tuesday and both my wife and I were at home preparing to leave for Italy at the end of the week.  We heard it on the radio first.  Then we saw it.  Fire and smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center towers, both of which would soon collapse, killing over twenty seven hundred people in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth.

But a few days later, on the evening of Saturday, September 15, 2001, we were aboard an Alitalia flight from San Francisco to Milan, slightly behind schedule due to the interruption in world-wide air travel after the 9/11 attacks, but nevertheless off on our planned vacation trip to Italy.  We didn't realize it at the time, but a week later, we were in another place that, in both a literal and figurative sense, may be disappearing.  Not in a holocaust of smoke and fire, like the Twin Towers, but under the waves of the Adriatic and the waves of tourists flocking to it:  Venice.
After hundreds of years, Venice is sinking.  From time to time, it is flooded by high waters ("alta acqua").  When we toured Amsterdam in September of 2009 with local guide, Albert Walet, we talked about flooding in New Orleans after it was hit by Hurriance Katrina, and the situation in Venice.  The Dutch, who have learned how to protect their own low lying country from the sea, might have the engineering experience to save both Venice and New Orleans from Mother Nature's ire.  The question is:  Who will pay for it?

We toured Venice in 2001 with American Samantha Durel, who moved there from New York in 1988.  While sharing coffee with her in her apartment, Samantha explained that real estate prices had risen to the point where young Venetians could not afford places of their own, and continued to live with their parents well beyond the age where they should have flown the family coop.

When we returned from our month-long trip across Europe this year, I picked up the August issue of National Geographic and found this story:  "Vanishing Venice."  Here's what the magazine said about this one-of-a-kind cities:

"Ask about the alta acqua and Venice sinking, and he [the mayor] says, 'So go get boots.'  Let them wear boots.  Boots are fine for water, but useless against the flood that causes even more hand-wringing than any lagoon spillover: the flood of tourism.  Number of Venetian residents in 2007:  60,000.  Number of visitors in 2007:  21 million."

When we were there in 2001, American tourists were few and far between.  Many, including people we know, canceled plans for a fall trip to Europe, fearing possible terrorist attacks on U.S. citizens traveling abroad.  Cruise ships that made Venice a principal port of call stopped coming.  The owner of a high-end shop selling Venetian blown glass, himself an American, bemoaned the fact that his countrymen were not visiting the city.  "Americans buy," he said, "Now all we get our Eastern Europeans, traveling on tight budgets, coming in for the day, sightseeing for free, and bringing a bag lunch instead of eating in our restaurants."  A former resident quoted in the National Geographic story echoed those words, but said that those coming from the former Communist Bloc country might "buy a little plastic gondola."

Residents, of course, can't eat plastic gondolas.  They need local merchants to provide them with the goods necessary for daily life.  But as NG points out, "[s]ince December 2007, ten hardware stores have gone out of business.  In the Rialto market, souvenir sellers have replaced vendors who sold sausages, bread, or vegetables.  Tourists will not notice.  They do not visit Venice to buy an eggplant."

So, will Venice disappear for all the world, or just for the Venetians themselves?  Will it become a theme park or a museum, only open during certain hours of the day, rather an a living city of people?  As the National Geographic story concludes:  "Kisses end.  Dreams vanish, and sometimes cities too.  We long for the perfect ending, but the curtain falls along with our hearts.  Beauty is so difficult."