Saving Venice

Welcome to The Whole Story, I'm Anderson Cooper. The Italian city of Venice is stunningly beautiful and unique. It's made up of more than 100 small islands linked together by a unique system of canals and bridges, which is why it's become known as the City of Canals and has long been a top tourist destination.

But the number of visitors swarming Venice each summer has reached records in recent years. Tourists are motivated to come now, fearing the city might one day sink due to climate change. As you'll hear in this hour, many Venetians say that rising water is not their main concern, however. Their way of life is changing, and they say not for the better. CNN's Erica Hill went to Venice to find out why.

Piazza San Marco, Venice. For centuries on the third Saturday of July, one of the world's most iconic public squares transforms into the backdrop for a historic celebration la festa del redentore packing into san marco basin lining the shores at communal tables Neighbors and strangers alike sharing food, community, basking in the beauty of this ancient city.

Yet what began in the 16th century as a tradition to unite the Venetian community has, in recent years, become a symbol of its modern-day challenges. The solemn procession to the Church of the Redeemer, now overshadowed by an all-day floating dance party. No denying, this is a great way to spend a Saturday. But for many locals, Redentore has lost its meaning.

Their own festival has become dominated by tourists. Many Venetians have stopped attending altogether. It's that reality which led us here.

Tens of millions of visitors flock to Venice every year, but thousands of its residents have been leaving. You've likely heard that Venice is flooding and sinking. But many locals say the real threat to their city isn't the water. It's the flood of tourists. We came to better understand the Venetians determined to stay. and their growing dread that their beloved Venice may be dying.

Like many first-time visitors to Venice, I had grand ideas about what this floating city would really be like. Bustling crowds, ancient buildings. Not this. This farm is about, you've had it four years? This is the fourth year. Welcome to the island of Sant'Erasmo. one of more than a hundred islands that make up Venice. Cesare Benelli, a native Venetian and restaurateur, believes this land could help Venetians chart a different future toward a more authentic Venice and

a more sustainable one. We also have an acre of 3,000 plants of artichokes. Artichokes. Benelli's project, Osteonorto, or the hosts of the garden, is a farming collective of more than a dozen Venetian restaurant owners. The collective. Why... Why did you have to create this? One reason was to supply produce at zero mileage. And the second idea, the second part of the idea was to...

preserve, to mark the territory. We have a feeling, most of my colleagues, that we are losing the land from our feet. We are not interested in numbers of tourism. There are too many. And the city cannot hold these numbers. It's a disgrace. want to promote a quality tourism, respect more the value of the city itself but also of the territory in which the environment which is very delicate and unique.

For us, it's more intimate and very valuable. And this is part of it. And this is a part. We are in the heart of these ideas. After touring Osteonorto, Cesare brought me to his personal farm.

where a group of locals joined us for a true farm-to-table lunch and a passionate conversation about the future of their home. Foreigners come and they think Venice is sinking. We have to save it. When you hear save Venice, what does that mean to you? Respect Venice when you come here, understand where you are. Michaela Borolozzi is an accomplished artist, born and raised in Venice. Always I ask, do you know that we have cinema?

we have school oh really we have a swimming pool two swimming pool in town i can't believe it yeah but a lot of people doesn't really know how really venice work why do you think that is I mean mostly because there is no cars, so people say no cars, no life. Matteo Silverio is a trained architect who specializes in computational design. He and his wife have decided to raise their family here in Venice, despite its many challenges.

with tourists they say okay do you usually stand in the middle of the street during the rush hour no they will kill you either a bike or a car so that here this is a street This is not a pedestrian way. This is not a nice place to take pictures and now they are all made of selfies. And they take selfies on the top of the bridge pretending nobody pretending you're a passive you're ruining my pictures no i'm just going home in my opinion there are two different things one thing is what the

and another one is what the citizens can do. 32-year-old Elena Almansi is as Venetian as it gets. She is an accomplished competitive rower, taking after her mother. a well-known rowing champion and Venetian artisan. People who live in Venice, like, lose their sanity totally because you're surrounded by people who do not know how to, you know.

act like a normal person. They just throw the garbage into your windows because it's open. They have to act exactly like if they are in their own city, okay? It's not because you're in a vacation you can do whatever you want. It's not that.

Venice is the canary in the coal mine. How so? This is like a microscopic petri dish of everything that could go wrong with tourism. Entrepreneur Emanuele Del Carlo has launched nearly a dozen businesses in Venice, from an advertising agency to a tiramisu shop. A lot of people think that saving Venice must come from outside. And instead say, Venice must come from inside. People travel to know, to learn. It's a city, it's not able to teach them how to behave.

it is the city's fault so excuse my french it's gonna be somebody off if you do anything in venice so you just do enough to guarantee yourself to be elected again without scaring too much the people, scaring too much the investors, something like that, because yes, Venice is going to rot away, but it's going to happen, not tomorrow.

Well, I agree with Emmanuel, but also with Adana. Cesare Parise is president of one of the city's oldest charity organizations, which today provides residents with critical social and medical aid. Because if Venice is a city we don't need now to speak about tourists. We have to speak about the life of the city and the people who choose to live inside. Does Venice still feel like a city to you?

No. That's why I say it's a Canadian coal mine because you can see it like 10-15 years in advance what can go wrong. when the stakeholders of the city are not involved in planning for the city and when the tourism is not managed. Because tourism is good. Tourism is a force for good, make people less racist, make people happier, make people more knowledgeable, more democratic because they understand each other.

them more knowledge so is that the answer though getting rid of a person who just comes for a day yeah we are all talking about the same thing like I mean No population, no houses, too many tourists, Airbnb destroying everything. The politics is ruining the city as well. These are the problems of the city.

I have problems with my kids, for example. There is no schools. I mean, there are schools, but there are less and less. They are closing. I mean, there is no vision. We are just living day by day. because I guess we are just now in a process to choose if the city will die or will survive at least. You care deeply about Venice, so you must still have some hope. You're not giving up. No, no, no, personally not.

No, it's against my nature. Till the end of the day. Yeah. Hours at least. When we come back, so many people feel they have to come to Venice. before it sinks or it floods. People should really stay calm. How to see the real Venice. It's your escape to be on the water. Totally, 100%. A lesson. in traditional Venetian rowing. I understand why you say this is so peaceful. So if you ask a rower why do you row in Venice, just try once and you understand. Then you know.

Since arriving in Venice, I've been told on more than one occasion that the only way to really see this city is from the water. Sometimes I just think like... How beautiful Venice had to be before the motors, before the invention of these noisy friends. Here in Venice we are standing up on the other side, so we face the front of the boat, we see where we're going, we don't need to carry an extra person on the back to drive and scream, we don't want these kind of things.

We do everything by ourselves. It's the only place in Venice in which you can't go if you're not a Venetian citizen. So it's your escape to be on the water? Totally, 100%. because it's a way to still have the feeling that you own your city, because when you walk around you don't have this feeling. You kind of feel that you are a stranger, a foreigner in your own place. But while you're in the water, you can feel how magical the Venice is.

What do you think rowing means to Venice as a community? It's a big thing for all the people, for most of the people who take part in their races. The races are actually the Olympic Games, so you take it very seriously. You train every day. For me, it's important because it's like a family tradition, we can say. My mum used to row in the rowing regattas, my dad as well. So I kind of keep the tradition alive, not only the rowing tradition, but my family tradition.

You'd be hard-pressed to overstate just how deeply rowing runs through the veins of this city and families like Elena's. Her mother Anna retired from competitive racing years ago, yet remains fiercely committed to keeping the tradition alive. Anna now proudly makes the flags for winners of the city's regattas. which she meticulously crafts and paints by hand. Twist, drop and push. All the way straight, yes. And return back, yeah? Okay.

Elena has discovered her own way to help preserve the culture of rowing in Venice through teaching. We have Row Venice in which we teach basically the tourists how to do this, to let them know what rowing means. How have the tourists changed in your lifetime? The door was open for five minutes and tourists came in without even asking or realizing that there's a house. Where are you going? There's a sort of disrespect. Not all of them, of course. They don't...

understand that the place is not there for them, but they are here for the city. Do you worry about, as a Venetian, the soul of the city for people who live here? Do you worry about that going away? that is slowly going away because locusts are going away. In recent years, residents have been leaving Venice in droves. Population peaked back in the 1950s at nearly 175,000. Today, roughly 50,000 call Venice home, and the impact runs deep.

Everything changes because less locals means less services. Less services means less locals. It's a chain that keeps going at a circle. So you struggle to find a family doctor. go to the supermarkets, which is full of supermarkets, but all of them sell only the highest price thing, because tourists buy it anyways. The only way to save the city is keeping the locals in. Otherwise, it's going to be like an empty box. You're determined to stay. Your parents are staying. Can you change things?

The only way to change things is raising our voice. To raise our voice we must be more than 49,000.

This is the boat of Venetians, not the boat of tourists. Cesare Parise is another avid Venetian rower, raising his voice. When did you first learn to row? Oh, I was a child. He's president of a leading aid organization and also the steward of one of the city's remaining boatyards, known as Squeros.

This is a gondola under construction. This is fantastic. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it smells so good. Here, Venetian craftsmen build and repair the city's boats using techniques passed down over centuries. How long will it take to build this boat? We say we need 400 hours. 400. Wow. And you can split them on the two months, three months, or just remonting one month. or two weeks. It depends. All depends. Yeah. We have 46 types of boats and they're all boats that are really fantastic.

I was born over there, just around the corner. But like Elena, Cesare fears this may be the last generation to experience Venice the way he does. Lost in the city walking is something you can do anything in the world. Lost in the city on the boat is something you can do only in Venice. What do you think? Venice will be like in 10 years. I don't want to answer that. So you don't want to think about what it might be in 10 years? No.

How urgent are the problems now? The problems that you see with tourists and housing. Venice is just dying. Venice is dying or maybe Venice is died. Already dead. Yeah. A friend of mine says, saving Venice, we are saving the world. Because if you find a way to have tourists in Venice that don't kill the city, we maybe find the theory, the method to save all the city of the world.

Of course, mass tourism isn't the first challenge the city has faced. It's not going underwater. Not yet. Up next, battling the rising sea. It's a very good temporary solution that buys us time. Since its founding, Venice has drawn power from its relationship with the sea as a line of defense and a gateway for trade, for sustenance and for sport. And famously,

as a dazzling playground for artists and dreamers. There is no Venice without the water. And yet, for much of the last hundred years, the sea that gave Venice its power has been working against this city and its survival. Aqua Alta, literally high water in Italian,

has been a part of Venetian life since the Middle Ages. But its intensity began to change in the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution helped usher in climate change. A rapidly heating planet, and rising sea levels contributing to more frequent Aqua Alta events, more intense flooding, and greater threats to this floating city at its existence.

While visitors may still need to pack their rain boots the chances of their Venice vacation being drowned out have largely disappeared. So many people feel they have to come to Venice. before it sinks or it floods. I think people will still have a lot of time until Venice really sinks. So people should really stay calm.

You don't have to rush. No, yeah. It's not going underwater. Not yet. Not yet, thanks to this engineering marvel, the MOSE, a first-of-its-kind barrier system hidden on the sea floor. When the water is forecast to reach a certain level, the 78 flood gates are raised, closing off the lagoon and the city from the sea. Since coming online in 2020, the MOSE has dramatically shifted the impact of an Aqua Ulta on Venice.

The MOSE, the barriers, came up today. What does that change for San Marco? So it changes a lot, especially the shops are not under water anymore. So this is manageable now? That's manageable.

Georg Umgisser is an oceanographer who studies how global sea level rise is impacting the lagoon. His models help to forecast when those very expensive mosaic gates should be raised. If there were no mosaic... what would the water level be well depending on the lowest points which is about 80 centimeters it will it would come up to here probably 30 centimeters

So Venetians say, oh, there's no climate change anymore. We are safe, but we're not safe. Venice was very useful for this, to show the world that this is happening. a solution or is it a band-aid? It is a temporary solution for the next let's say 20-30 years. Then with climate change we will get higher and higher water level. And then the MOSA has to be raised not 10, 15 times, it has to be raised 30 times, 40 times, 50 times, and then it gets out of control.

Absolutely, especially with such a long day. So in this room is where the decision can be made to raise the mose. Si. How often is it used? The MOS has a frequency that we have experienced in these years, which is greater than the frequency expected originally from the project. How much is too much for the MOSE? When would you not be able to use it anymore?

So the Mose does not have any problems from a structural point of view to guarantee its function even in scenarios of increase the level of the sea. It's yet another new challenge Venice now faces. As global sea level continues to rise, the gates will need to be raised more frequently. But raising the Mose more often than originally intended is not only expensive,

at approximately 200,000 euros each time. It also comes with serious concerns for both the city and the lagoon itself. So if you have to especially close it for longer times, like two days or something like this. and you have stagnant water in here and maybe it starts to smell and so on. Second problem is that if you have to close it too often the ships cannot come through anymore. How much does that cost?

Where do you think the biggest issue lies? Communicating this to policymakers. Because policymakers think ahead of maximum five years. We have to really think. I had 50 years or something like this. We let the world talk about Venice, often for the wrong reason. Coming up... the search for solutions. You ever thought about reaching out to Airbnb to say, hey, can we partner on this? Actually, they reached out to us through their lawyers. What I fear the most is this low dying. This low drop.

Every day something dies of the local community and gets substituted with something that is global. Venice is slowly transforming itself into a... A dying showroom. A dying showroom. Yeah. I've heard amusement park. Yeah, amusement park as well. But I don't see a lot of fun here for tourists, honestly, because you are surrounded by other tourists.

I think we are really on the verge of losing completely the fact that this is just a place where people work for tourism and it's not a community anymore. I keep on saying, we have 101% responsibility of the way Venice is now, as Venetians. There's a lot of activities in this town that Venetians never do. For example... We only get on a gondola if we get married or when we die.

I mean, it's like going on a horse cart on New York Central Park. I don't think any New Yorker goes on those. So to that point, do you think Venice as a city needs to market itself differently? Absolutely. We let the world talk about Venice, often for the wrong reason. Venice is sinking, Venice is depopulating, Venice stinks. I think it's important that we are trying to attract people.

or to maintain here people that is clever, entrepreneurial, because that is in the genes of the city, not the city of shop owners and renters. That's what has become.

A lot of the people I've spoken to have talked about the housing crisis in this city, which a lot of other cities around the world can relate to. That's an issue you've been trying to solve. Yes. How difficult is that? Extremely. We have this project called fairbnb.coop. It's a cooperative project. Don Quixote effort of trying to solve a systemic problem worldwide. We started from Venice.

Because we have nothing against private property, of course, but if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community. The city's already limited housing supply has been further stressed as more homes have turned into vacation rentals. The idea of Fair B&B is to reclaim some of the city's housing for the community.

by enforcing some guardrails. Homes in the Fair B&B network can only be rented out by residents, not foreign owners or corporate speculators. And there's also a cap to keep Venetian speculators in check. Have you ever thought about reaching out to Airbnb to say, hey, can we partner on this? Actually, they reached out to us through their long years. trying to shut us down at the beginning for the name. I don't think that as a company Airbnb is evil.

I don't think it is. I think it is a brilliant idea for very talented individuals that has been able to amass an amazing power. And it's a pity that they are not able to balance this great power and great responsibility they have. with the needs of the local communities, because there's not going to be another Venice. So once you have helped change this place forever, it's not going to come back.

The mounting consequences of mass tourism have been apparent to Venetians like Emanuele for decades. Now the city is finally starting to address it. So this monitors the foot traffic? Yeah. People arriving and people going out of Venice. In 2020, officials created the Smart Control Room, a monitoring hub where a constant stream of data tracks and records the flow of traffic and people's movements. So if I am here as a tourist,

What do you know about me? Oh, nothing. Nothing? No. But you do track some general cell phone data. It's a calculation based on an algorithm on the market share of the roaming system. So we can know 100, 200 people from the States. 1,000, 2,000 people from Germany are in Venice today, but we don't know who they are. Samar Square here, Samar Square there. You have a lot of pictures of Samar Square. It's a very delicate environment. So it's very important. This is the base also to take decision.

For example, the entry fee system. In 2024, Venice experimented with a controversial 5 euro entry fee for day trippers on select dates. The mayor has announced a similar plan for 2025. Some critics, I know you've heard them say it was too little too late. It took too long. You didn't charge enough money. It didn't keep.

as many people out. Everyone has an opinion in this world, so we are all experts in everything. But after 50 years of debates, a lot of books about the overtourism, about... the dying city and the sinking city and so on, we are still here and we are, I think, the frontrunner of a new way to better manage the tourism. The magic word is balance. We need to find a new balance. This used to be water.

Down here is where I used to live. Fabio Carrera grew up on the southeastern tip of Venice in Santa Elena. This used to be a bakery here. But for the last several decades, he and his students at Wooster Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches, have been studying and documenting Venice's transformation from the water up. I mean, we've done over 300 studies. So there is much that we haven't studied in Venice. What about the tourist fee? Do you think that...

you know, is in the end effective? Not as a deterrent per se, but it has spread the news that Venice is crowded. And so it indirectly, I think, may have created some second thoughts and people who might have... wanted to come to Venice. I don't think the five euros is going to make a difference. I mean, it's the cost of a spritz. So I personally think that jobs are the core.

uh issue because again if you can make enough money you can buy a house they're they're for sale right now the next question is Where do you live? Right. But the third one is the one that people don't think about much is the urban mobility. So we have a very cool and quaint system of boats that takes us around, right? Which is great. But it's not up to par with modern means of transportation, which could make a big difference if we had, say, a subway system which was talked about for a while.

Because that could mean that you could live in Venice and work on the mainland and get there real quick. On the mainland around Venice, there's plenty of jobs.

high-tech jobs. All the stuff we're talking about bringing here already is there. Do you see Venice dying? Not really, no. I think enough people now realize that the tourism card has been overplayed. now, and there's going to be some sort of retrenching. It's already happening to a large degree. There's big protests all over Europe, over tourism, especially in Spain.

That's how things change. I'm oddly optimistic about this. I mean, I don't think it's gonna get worse. I know. Fabio's optimism isn't entirely unfounded. If there's one thing Venice does well, it's adapt. I want to build a community, because if we are a community, we can fight. Nobody wants to leave Venice. We leave Venice because it's not affordable anymore for us.

I wanted to work with my hand and maybe in the future have my own studio but the rent was so expensive and so I thought that the only way to grow myself was to travel. But every time I was abroad, I was feeling Venice call me back. Then COVID came, so I had to come back in Venice. And it was the best time of my life in Venice.

Venice was so beautiful. I started to love Venice again. I started to meet people because before you meet a lot of tourists and you don't really realize who is living close by you. And so I started to feel like I really wanted to do something. I thought it was at the right point to open my own shop. Luckily, the rent was coming down because of COVID, and now it's four years. I have my workshop.

He's off worship and off the show. Michaela Borolozzi is part of a new generation of Venetians hoping to revive the city's artisan traditions. Once a staple, local shops like Michaela's have largely been driven out, as vendors push mass-produced goods with little connection to the city itself. I can start from the name of my brand that's called Relight Venice, and the idea is to give back the light to Venice. The first product I made, it was a big, big lollipop, colorful one. I love colors.

and the shape was coming from the colon of Doge's Palace, so gothic Venetian architectures. So this lollipop, while you are eating this lollipop, having fun, walking around, at the end remains the stick. so that was the question you want to consume it or keep it preserving support it and my point is that venice is beautiful as my product even much more so Just be careful, don't consume Venice because Venice, we cannot rebuild it or rebuy it. It sounds like you think it can be saved. Yes.

Yes, I'm sure of that. I think it's important that the people from abroad meet a local person to get to know the culture, get to know the tradition, so after that he can... maybe enjoy Venice in the nicest way and maybe help us to preserve it. There is a lot of younger people that have my age that they start to open their own business, their own shop. We are all friends, so we also try to work together.

I want to build a community because if we are a community, we can fight, we can decide to stay. There are so many things to change. but there are so many opportunities Michaela's neighbor, Matteo Silverio, is a fellow designer and the co-founder of Rehub, a startup that's giving new life to Venice's world-renowned Murano Glass. Ten years ago, I started working here in Murano. with Glassmaster and factories. And I fell in love with the way they work.

I started looking at the nice things and also the bad things. They produce a lot of waste and unfortunately this waste is not recyclable. Why? Because they have metal oxides. to paint the glass, to make it red, blue, whatever the color you like. This is a problem, an ecological problem, but also an economical problem. You figured out a way then to take the waste that couldn't be reused.

And you actually are turning it back into Murano glass. How does that happen? I was a try and error process. A lot of trials. I was learning by doing. But you figured it out. Yes. What you see here is this, either it's this or this one. This is 3D printed. It's entirely made of glass waste. And there's nothing in here but glass. There's no plastic, no resin. No, no, no, no. So what you have here...

it's completely glass. Rehub's innovative technique also requires a much lower temperature than traditional glassblowing. With no gas needed, Mateo says his process uses 70% less energy. I mean, for centuries, Murano has been the center of innovation, you know, related to glass, of course. What we are trying to do is, of course, making Borano a better place, a more sustainable place. So it's nice to stay here.

and fostering, in a way, the community and the economy of the island, which is important. When you look at the future for Venice, what do you see? We have so many issues here. It is global warming. is going on we spend billion on building the maze yet they are not enough so this is another issue we really should take care of at least thinking about it One solution that in part can help sustain Venice should be trying to raise a bit the city.

Engineer Pietro Tattini has devised one potential solution to combat the rising seas and supplement the MOSE barrier. Literally, raising the city itself. saline water that we can take from the lagoon. into deep aquifers where the water is already brackish. And if we inject properly with a sufficient pressure, then the result should be that the city would rise a bit. And how much could you raise the city?

to the loss of land elevation that the city has experienced over the past century. So how quickly could this happen? In about 10 years. So the MOSA cost $6 billion and took decades. to do, how much would it cost? millions euros. That's a big difference. Much, much less. This is the order of magnitude, of course. I mean, if you think there's 30 million people coming a year to Venice, if everybody pays one euro...

It's a nice idea. Who is excited about it? We are excited about it. If the mayor now says we want to try this, he could have... a place in history. Do you think this combination of potentially injecting the seawater to raise the city, keeping the Mosa there as well, this combination could save Venice? buys us a lot of time, more than 100 years probably.

There is no doubt the barrier protecting Venice today from being underwater will eventually be outmatched by global sea level rise. But there are possible solutions to both the rising tide and the challenges of mass tourism. The question is whether this city and the world will choose to save Venice. This week on The Assignment, with me, Adi Cornish. For a moment there, the phrase body positivity was everywhere. And then Ozempic entered the chat. The pendulum has swung back to the...

Glamorization of thinness. And the American Society of Plastic Surgeons announced we're entering the ballet body era. Are the drugs the real reason thin is in? Can body positivity and the Ozempic era coexist? Listen to The Assignment with me, Audie Cornish, streaming now on your favorite podcast app.