Gruppo 25 aprile

To our foreign friends: would you please sign this petition?

Do you agree with the petition? You can sign it at this address:

https://www.change.org/p/comune-di-venezia-salviamo-venezia

Courtesy translation, soon on “change.org” too:

“The city of Venice is undergoing  a transformation to suit the mass tourism. Venice is a special city, a World Heritage Site, intact for centuries but still alive with inhabitants adapting to its rhythms: the absence of cars is the most striking example of this unique lifestyle. The most remarkable feature of Venice in fact is that her stones and her inestimable treasures are integrated in an urban pattern that lives and breathes: people who live, work, walk and move by boat, attend school and university. However, all of this is in danger to disappear. Venice is irremediably becoming a theme park, where everything is for tourists. But in this way those who will visit her in the future will be disappointed: you may photograph the most famous monuments, but you could not anymore say of having really visited one of the oldest and most beautiful civilisations in the world. At most you could say that you saw the precious stones, without soul and disfigured by the presence of only touristic shops and restaurants in place of history, tradition and culture: local crafts, food and wine specialities will be a far memory.

What has been altered over the years? Everything has been liberalized: now you can open a tourist shop everywhere and the changes of use have no restrictions anymore. Meanwhile, the number of residents is gradually decreasing, with 500 people less every year. They were 108,000 in 1971, today they are less than 56,000. The city is being emptied. Why? Because today anyone can rent an apartment for tourist use, more or less legally. No one supervises it, no one prevents it. And the cost of apartments, for who would like to reside there, keeps on increasing.

Venice is not the property of Venetians and saving her is everybody’s interest. It’s not a matter of “protecting an endangered species” but of implementing any actions that can safeguard Venice as a living city. Because one day the whole humanity will ask an explanation – to whom is allowing this – of why a city so unique and special is gone. And it will not be the rising sea to have devastated her, but human beings.

What can we do? First of all it’s necessary a popular, cross-cutting and international mobilization to advocate new rules for the protection of Venice and her unique features.

But what is also needed first and foremost is an immediate action, a “standstill rule” to stop every type of transformation and exploitation for a while: with this petition we request the City Council of Venice and the Region of Veneto a provisional ban on the changes of use in the urban regulation. We urge the competent authorities to stop the transformation of apartments from residential to tourist use. We request them to write new rules, where necessary with the help of international law, to protect the urban heritage of Venice before it is too late.

And we ask the national and international authorities to monitor the safeguard of this inestimable World Heritage, which goes beyond local and national “competence”.

Do you agree with the petition? You can sign it at this address:

https://www.change.org/p/comune-di-venezia-salviamo-venezia

The petition has already been signed by more than 1,500 venetians, will you join them? The author is one of us: Serena Spinazzi Lucchesi. Serena works as a journalist for “Gente Veneta” but has done this in her personal capacity.

When we created this civic platform two years ago we wrote: “Whoever truly loves Venice is welcome here, irrespective of nationality and religion: this has always been the strenght of Venice, since the middle age: its capacity to attract the best energies from all over the Mediterranean Sea”.

Being venetian is a state of mind, not an identity card issue. Be venetian, join our fight!

For our (many) foreign friends

Why should you do it, why should you care?

Because we need a standstill clause and we need it now, or all our houses will be turned into luxury hotels or B&B, like the one of the next picture (Ca’ Cendon) which is 500 years old, and now is just one of the many hotels in town.

Is it the first time that we make this request? Not really: those who were at the Fenice Opera opening on 22 November 2014 may remember this:

Have we been heard? Not beyond “lip service” of all politicians, but with your help may be.. Venice is World Heritage and the world can make a difference.

NB the state of conservation of the World Heritage “Venice and its Lagoon” has been evaluated by the joint UNESCO/ICIMOS/RAMSAR reactive monitoring mission carried out in October 2015. The report of the monitoring mission is being submitted to the Italian authorities. The state of conservation report will be submitted for review by the World Heritage Committee at its 40th session in Istanbul, in a few weeks from now (July 2016).

This is the time, for those who want to make a difference. Together we can!

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PS per i nostri lettori italiani: le proposte del gruppo25aprile in materia di residenzialità a Venezia sono queste (e se vorrete aiutarci a migliorarle o farci avere un vostro parere, i vostri commenti e suggerimenti saranno sempre graditi):

https://gruppo25aprile.org/?s=le%20nostre%20proposte%201%29