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.
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