N°65 — Swimming against the tide

Venice, 7th January 2026,

I’m a Venetian, but I’ve always lived on the other side of the bridge (which connects Venice’s historic center to the mainland, ed.), I had never really considered living in the historic centre, until I moved here four years ago.

Venice isn’t like other cities: it’s uncomfortable. For example, if you own a car, you have to leave it on the mainland, and parking can cost up to €1,700 a year. Then, to get around, you need a “vaporetto” boat pass, which adds another €200–250 a year for public transport. On top of that, rental prices have skyrocketed.

I was only able to move because the municipality launched a social housing program designed to allow young couples, who couldn’t access mortgages or buy a home, to rent an apartment in the historic center at controlled prices. The idea was to try to slow down the rate of its depopulation by bringing young couples back, hoping they will have children and help increase the number of future residents.

In the mid-1950s, Venice was at the height of its population density, with over 110,000 inhabitants. Today there are around 48,000. About 60,000 people have left, since the 1980s predominently.

As a Venetian who’s not originally from the historic center, I’ve always commuted to Venice for work, so the city has always been part of my life. I now live in Giudecca, one of the very few areas that has remained largely working-class, but even here, housing prices are becoming extremely high.

There’s a deep wound in this city: you can feel that Venice exists primarily for tourism. You can see it when you walk through a square like San Marco’s at 11pm and find it empty, a place which is usually the beating heart of a city. You see it in the vaporetto routes: when major events take place, tourist routes are increased but not the ones mainly used by residents. This weighs heavily on everyday life. The boats are overcrowded, and sometimes they simply leave you behind. That means losing at least twenty minutes—when you’re trying to get home, or you’re on your way to work. During rush hours near tourist areas, among the suitcases are often construction workers and laborers, who often can’t get on board because of the crowd and are left waiting. It’s exhausting. All these small things add up and make living in the city stressful.

I’ve started grumbling too, like the old Venetians—those who complain, even though they are often the first to sell their family homes or their grandmother’s house to hotels or to turn them into short-term rentals.

When I chat at the bar about having moved to Venice, I realize the ratio is one to ten: for every person who moves here, ten leave. A friend of mine lived in Giudecca for thirty-seven years and eventually sold his house and moved to the mainland. And in the end, it’s understandable. With the lack of services and a cost of living that’s double everywhere else, why would you stay? Now he manages to save a little money but the main reason for moving was for the services, and he missed having a sense of community.

Tourism has transformed the kinds of jobs available to people. Cobbler’s have been replaced by bartenders; mill workers by receptionists. Almost all the fishermen who once caught “moeche”—small crabs that were a famous lagoon delicacy—are gone. Local shops like bakeries and butchers disappear, replaced by bars and places to grab a quick sandwich.

The situation today leaves you with very few options. It pushes you to sell, often to large holding companies that buy properties to turn into Airbnbs. And even if you say no and try to row in another direction, the system keeps pushing and pushing, until eventually you give in. Tourism sets market prices; tourism sets rents. That’s how the historic center slowly empties out.

I moved here four years ago only thanks to that social housing project with regulated rents. And yet, despite everything, more than once I’ve found myself thinking: “why didn’t I come sooner?”

Nicolò