Cruise ships: The giants are out – Venice continues to worry

From tomorrow on it will be over with the cruise giants in Venice. The big ships are no longer allowed to pass through the historic center. However, activists still see the lagoon in danger.

After all, such images are a bit of the past: Huge colossi made of steel and glass that build up over the old town of Venice like in a disaster film and make the ancient palaces look like toy houses. From August 1st, cruise ships will no longer be allowed to sail directly past St. Mark’s Square through the Guidecca Canal.

Some souvenir sellers and port entrepreneurs are concerned. Italy’s Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini, on the other hand, is enthusiastic: “It is not an exaggeration to call this decision ‘historic’. The whole world has been waiting for it for years. Everyone was confused to see that these huge ships sail through the most fragile and beautiful place in the world. ”

Protests – unheard for years

For years, many residents of Venice and environmental groups have fought to put an end to the cruise ships. Their arguments: Thousands of tourists flocking to the city at the same time. Exhaust gases and fine dust – cruise ships blow a lot of them into the air. And: waves! Some of the ships are over 300 meters long and displace a lot of water.

The waves, it is feared, damage the wooden foundations of the houses and endanger the whole city. UNESCO had therefore called on the Italian government to act and threatened to put Venice on the negative list for endangered world cultural heritage.

Lagoon may continue to be driven

In March, the government voted in favor of the ban: it applies at least to ships that are longer than 180 meters or that emit a particularly large amount of exhaust gases. Stefano Micheletti, spokesman for the citizens’ initiative called “No Big Ships”, is still only half satisfied:

It’s a step forward. But the problem is not solved. It would only be solved if the cruise ships were banned completely from the Venice lagoon – and not just from the city center. ”

The ships are allowed to continue into the lagoon and then, a little further away from the old town, towards the industrial port. It is now to be upgraded for more than 150 million euros.

But this does not solve another problem: Large ships whirl up the seabed in the shallow lagoon, which is then partly washed into the open sea. New fairways may also be necessary, which exacerbate the problem. “The excavations in the 1960s already led to major erosion in the central lagoon,” reports Micheletti. There mud flats and sandbanks were removed. We are talking about millions of cubic meters of sediment that the lagoon has already lost. It becomes more and more a part of the sea. ”

Ideas competition should bring a solution

The large tributaries into the lagoon have been diverted by humans – no new sediment follows. This is bad for the lagoon’s ecosystem and ultimately also for the city, around which the water is getting deeper and deeper.

At least in the long term, the cruise ships should dock outside the lagoon – an ideas competition should clarify where. But many Venetians also say: the city no longer needs cruise tourists. And anyway you have to move away from “monoculture tourism”. Corona showed how devastating this dependency can be.