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Venice: One of the world’s greatest tourist destinations.
As Crusaders and Pilgrims during the Middle Ages and Renaissance can hardly be considered tourists, it is the young gentlemen of the 18th century that can be accounted as the first tourists of Venice. The experts on Venice are going to argue that neither Montaigne—the perfect Renaissance gentleman—nor Montesquieu was young when he visited Venice and that Goethe on his first trip in 1786 was 37 years old.
In the 19th century, after Venice had lost its independence, first to the French then to the Austrian Empire, the city’s magnetic melancholy became the place for romantic inspiration. Lord Byron and John Ruskin are perhaps the best-known Anglo-Saxon travelers to the city. But poets, authors, and musicians from of all over Europe did the mandatory pilgrimage to Venice. The first Thomas Cook tour to Venice took place in 1867, a year after the city and its mainland territories voted to be part of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy.
The success of the train at the end of the 19th century brought even more famous artists, such as Thomas Mann, Henry James, and Marcel Proust. Richard Wagner died in 1883 at Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, now the municipal casino. But the train also brought increasing numbers of middle-class tourists. Murano glass, Burano lace, and gondola tours became synonymous with Venice. In 1895, the International Biennale of Art is founded and is an immediate success, with over 200,000 visitors on the first year. In 1910, the works of Gustav Klimt are acclaimed, while Picasso’s works are discretely removed.
World War I is a very somber period for the city, which is bombed by Austria and flooded several times. In 1932, the first international film festival opens at the Venice Lido. Despite the Fascist rule of Italy that lasts until 1943, the city remains a great tourist attraction and Venice is linked to the continent by a new bridge running along the railroad bridge. The revival of post–World War II Venice as one of the world’s greatest tourist destination has created serious economical and ecological problems.
Today’s Venice receives 20 million tourists a year, and during the weekends, some 100,000 visitors arrive daily. Over the last 50 years, the population of the city has declined from about 170,000 to 83,000, reaching its lowest demographic point in 1995 at 70,000 people. Outdoor markets have shrunken and food stores have been replaced by a multitude of tourist traps, selling made-in-China products ready to be taken home by Chinese tourists after a hefty mark-up.
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