Large cruise ships banned from central Venice in August



The cruise can continue to have fun, but further afield. Cruise ships, accused of endangering the historic center of Venice, a UNESCO heritage site, will be banned from August 1. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi hailed “an important step for the preservation of the Venetian lagoon”, subjected for decades to the continual ballet of sea monsters pouring millions of visitors into the city of the Doges.

Defenders of the environment and cultural heritage accuse the large waves generated by these ships, several hundred meters long and several storeys high, of eroding the foundations of the Serenissima, and of threatening the fragile ecosystem of its lagoon. The debate was revived last month with the return of cruises after months of a pandemic that had given the Venetians calm and clean air, while depriving them of significant income.

Avoid appearing in the list of “heritage in danger”

Vessels over 25,000 gross tonnage, over 180 meters in length, 35 meters in air draft, or whose emissions contain more than 0.1% sulfur will no longer be allowed to enter the basin. of San Marco, the San Marco Canal and the Giudecca Canal. They will have to moor in the industrial port of Marghera, where improvements will be made, while smaller cruise ships (around 200 passengers) will be able to continue to dock in the heart of the city, a government statement said.

Italy, underlined the Minister of Culture and Heritage, Dario Franceschini, thus wanted “to avoid the concrete risk of the city being included on the list of heritage in danger”. Time was running out because Unesco’s advisory bodies proposed this inscription at the end of June and the World Heritage Committee must decide at its meeting in China from July 16 to 31. Inscription on the list of heritage in danger may allow the committee to grant rapid assistance to the site concerned within the framework of the World Heritage Fund.

“Alert the international community”

But it also serves to “alert the international community in the hope that it will mobilize to save the sites concerned” and can also be perceived “as a dishonor”, writes Unesco on its site. Above all, if nothing is done in the long term, the site can be removed from the World Heritage list, to which Venice has been inscribed since 1987.

The debate on the presence of the giants of the seas is not confined to Venice and has always had an international dimension, due to the notoriety of this tourist destination, one of the most popular in the world. In early June, a plethora of international artists, from Mick Jagger to Wes Anderson to Francis Ford Coppola and Tilda Swinton, sent an open letter to Italian President Sergio Mattarella, Prime Minister Mario Draghi and the mayor of Venice to ask between others a “permanent stop” of cruise ship traffic.

Maintain the port vocation of Venice

The decree adopted Tuesday by the Council of Ministers “is a good compromise”, reacted the president of the association of tourist companies of Veneto, Confturismo Veneto. “Marghera’s solution will maintain Venice’s port vocation, saving jobs and activity on one side, and freeing up the Giudecca canal on the other”.

Because cruises generate considerable income for traders and the port of Venice: 400 million euros per year and 5,000 jobs. But no less than 90,000 people depend directly or indirectly on the city’s port infrastructure.

The government has undertaken to compensate for the shortfall for the sector, in particular the terminal manager, its subcontractors, logistics companies, etc. The port of Marghera will also have to be developed to accommodate liners and 150 million euros will be released for this purpose.



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