Venice has avoided being placed on the world’s heritage sites in danger, a decision that has put preservationists and government officials at odds.
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee said on Thursday that Italian canal city ‘Venice’ will not be included on the heritage list as the city banned large cruise ships through the canal last month, the Associated Press reported.
Italian officials passed the order last month to avoid danger designation. The cruise ship’s passage through the St. Mark’s Basin and Giudecca Canal are among the major attractions of Venice and reached by a large number of tourists. As the cruise ships began to return after a pandemic pause, their large size threatened the fragile city, which had been fairly quiet over the last year.
In order to preserve the heritage, Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini welcomed the decision and said, “the country would work for the protection of the lagoon and identify a sustainable development path for this unique reality.”.
The World Heritage Committee is meeting in China, and has asked to submit an update on the entire process of how the country will protect the city and what steps the government will take to prevent other dangers like over-tourism and population decline- the AP reported. The proposal should be submitted by Dec 2022 before the next meeting in 2023.
In 2019, the beautiful city of Venice reached a peak of 25 million individual visitors while at the same time losing locals at the rate of 1,000 per day. The move to keep large cruises away is a try to control the tourists from visiting Venice in order to explore this biggest attraction. However, it is a temporary measure and doesn’t guarantee that their rerouting won’t continue to impact the city.
- “The persistent issues affecting the precarious state of conservation of Venice and its lagoon have long been associated with a complex and ineffective governance framework”, Stephen Doempke, chairman of World Heritage Watch, told the UNESCO committee.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Center first recommended the inclusion of Venice on the endangered list last month in order to draw attention to the city’s preservation. But the final inclusion on the list can signal the committee’s distrust in the local management to maintain the site.