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Venice: Cruise ships will move

 

After years of complaints and demonstrations by Venetians tired of seeing their landscapes dwarfed by giant cruise ships and worries about the fragile condition of the city's foundations in the wake of the ships, the Italian government has signed off on a plan to keep the ships out of the city's canals.

Instead, for now, they will dock on the inland side of the lagoon at the city's industrial port of Marghera. From there they can reach the island city either by boat, or by a land route terminating at the Venice end of the bridge connecting it to the mainland.

Nothing will be noticeable immediately because no ships have sailed into Venice since cruises were shut down last spring by the pandemic.

The government has declared that the Marghera solution is temporary, and has issued a "call for ideas" to build a cruise terminal outside the lagoon "and give a structural and definitive solution to the problem of large ship transit in Venice." Presumably any such solution will include plans for infrastructure to move visitors from the ships to the city.

Along with the change in ship movements, the city is taking other steps to get better control over the flow of tourists, once it revives. One key measure is the creation of a €3 million control room that will allow officials to track where masses of tourists are moving and where traffic control or redirection may be needed; it works by analyzing cell phone data as people move through the city.

The best part of every trip is realizing that it has upset your expectations

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