Perche

There is really no low season anymore, but practically, from November through April it is cold, but great. At other times of the year you can still visit Venice without trouble, but you have to stay in certain neighborhoods (Castello, outer parts of Cannaregio or Dorsoduro) or else you'll be gridlocked. Cruise ships come from mid-March to late November.

http://crew-center.com/venice-italy-...-schedule-2017

rickg523

Well, I'll be in Venice the week after next with a family of 6 and we're booked into a holiday rental, though not an Airbnb.
So I went and checked the GeoIDS site.
Here's the introductory page:

Which Google translated as:

So I looked up the place I've rented and it was a red dot. The pop-up listing reads:

Strutture Ricettive
Struttura: CA' NAVAGERO
Ragione Sociale: CA NAVAGERO
Tipo Struttura: STRUTTURE RICETTIVE EXTRALBERGHIERE
Categoria: UNICA

By my understanding of the tool this is a known accommodation to the tax authority with a registered business name.
But the term "Extralberghiere" won't translate for me. Also when I zoomed in closer it also carried a blue dot but the legend on my mobile was truncated to "Struttura Ricettive Complem..."
Don't have a clue about that.
Other information on the property were the Quartiere, Localita, Municipalita, and Comune listings.
I know in an earlier post you mentioned red dot meant illegal. But that's not how it looks to me, albeit with my poor understanding of Italian.
Can you shed any light?
In any event, I'll report back if the whole thing goes pear-shaped and we end up in Padua or Verona....
Edited to add - I looked further and found another accommodation marked with a blue dot, which reads Strutture Recettive Complementari. This was Hotel Bisanzio, which we all know of.
Just wanted to include that data point. .Still not clear exactly what I'm looking at yet.
And more - I found the legal meaning of "extralberghiere." It encompasses all kinds of holiday rentals, agritourismos, youth hostels, and (I believe the pertinent category for Ca' Navagero) historical residences, among many others. Ca' Navagero is the former Palazzo Molina, a listed historical site, the residence for five years (1362-1367) of the poet Petrarch.
At this point, I'm confident this is no "nero" operation.

Perche

It is so new that I wouldn't get worked up about it. As the website says, they will be doing things to make it work over the next few months, so at this time I wouldn't make any changes in plans. The color of the dots is confusing, and not well explained. A newspaper article indicated that it had to do with whether or not they were legal, but the city's own website doesn't clearly state what the color of the dots mean, other than that it is to distinguish different types of places.

"Extralberghiere" would mean that it is not a hotel. Perhaps it is a B&B or an apartment.
"Struttura Ricettive Complem..." Struttura Ricettive is any place where guests can stay, which includes hotels, B&B's, any type of place that rents out a room. I assume Complem... Means Complementare, that they have additional rooms that you can use that are not part of your own room, or a place to have a function.

Don't worry, it won't go pear-shaped. This is so new that few Venetians probably know about it. In Venice, when a new law goes into effect it's not like everybody immediately adopts it. This is a step in the right direction. It will make people accountable for staying in legal places that pay taxes for hosting people. Right now, it seems most useful as way of allowing Venetians to have a way or reporting that someone in their building is renting out rooms as an AirBnb.

rickg523

Thanks for the quick response.
While you were writing, I was searching and if you look at my re-re-edited post (), you'll see I found the information about these type of accommodations and how it applies to the place I've booked.
I'm totally thrilled about this new tool and hope that by the end of summer they've got it usable for English speaking users. Because Venice cannot become a city where entire neighborhoods become "extralberghiere."

Perche

At the "ribbon cutting" ceremony for the expansion of the Marco Polo Airport they asked the Minister of the Interior about the problem of giant cruise ships, which they characterized as something like the big specter hanging over everyones' head, because they are important economically, but they are also terrible for the city. An analysis this past week indicated the reason why Venice went from having the cleanest air 25 years ago to becoming a city with excessive lung disease is due to cruise ship pollution. The analysis indicated that one one cruise, a cruise ship emits the same number of small particles as 15 million cars.

The announcement was, "Il ministro Delrio sul tema grandi navi: "Soluzione vicina, verrŕ annunciata a breve."" Minister Delrio about the subject of cruise ships: A solution is near, there will be an announcement shortly."

http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/d...ugno-2017.html

Tomorrow, Venetians are having a referendum about whether or not to ban cruise ships, but it is non-binding, and will be ignored. What the minister is referring to is that they are about to make a decision (which UNESCO pushed them to), about digging another canal so that cruise ships can get to the cruise ship terminal from the sea without having to go by San Marco (Vittorio Emanuele canal, which will have significant environmental consequences), or building a new cruise terminal in the nearby city of Marghera, and making cruise shippers take smaller boats or buses back and forth into Venice.

Either way, it does seem like things are progressing.

Perche

Turnstiles in San Marco seems like it's becoming almost a reality, a Venice appears to have gotten serious about its problem with mass tourism. First, they passed a law to ban cruise ships again, that won't be overturned by the courts. Second, they cannot get rid of the AirBnb's that are already there, but they have banned any new ones from opening. Now, the talk about crowd control has taken on another aspect.

The Festa del Redentore is probably the main holiday in Venice, and it is this Saturday and Sunday. It opens by them building a bridge from Venice, across the water, all the way to Giudecca. So you literally walk across the water. They used to strap boats together to make the passageway over the water, but now they use pontoons. In 1575, one-third of Venetians died due to the plague. The bishop promised to build a church on Giudecca if the plague would stop. So that's what he did, he built the Chiesa del Redentore. Every year they put together a way to walk across the water to the church to honor the day the plague was stopped.

The real highlight is the Saturday night fireworks. I've seen fireworks in New York, New Delhi, Boston, San Francisco, and more places than I can remember, and I don't think anyone does it better than Venetians. It's such a big thing that the night before, people would come out with chalk, and draw a box on the sidewalk along the water to claim that spot. Sometimes, they would send a family member outside to sleep in it to preserve the best spot to see the fireworks, but usually just the chalk would be enough. Festa del Redentore is deeply sentimental to Venetians. All along the water, it is packed with Venetians.

Since I'm in Rome right now, I was going to go up there for it, but I'm not. Something happened a few weeks ago that has changed things. Juventus is the Italian soccer team powerhouse. They keep racking up Italian championships. Two years ago they lost the European championship to Real Madrid in the final round of the tournament. That was expected. This year Juventus won the Italian league again and entered into the European Championship, and again made it to the final match, again against Real Madrid. This time, the expectation was that Juventus would win the June 3rd match up last month. They had the best defense, and made many other improvements. They lost, but a tragedy happened.

The match was played in Wales. Piazza San Carlo is the main Piazza in Torino. It's gigantic. They set up a giant TV screen so that the citizens could sit in the Piazza and watch it. Earlier in the day was the London Bridge terror attack where madmen terrorists crashed into people on the bridge, then ran into the Borough Market and started slashing people to death, until the police killed them. Eight people were killed, and 48 injured. There have been a number of terror attacks in Europe, but none so far in Italy.

Everyone in Torino knew what had happened earlier in the evening in London. About ten minutes before the end of the game, in packed Piazza San Carlo, someone threw a firecracker. The crowd of people thought it was a bomb, and started what is now known as the 2017 Turin Stampede. Everybody panicked so badly and tried to run out of the Piazza that over 1,560 people were injured, far more than in London, and I think a child and a woman died. That's almost 30 times more casualties than happened earlier in the evening in London, and nothing even happened except that someone lit a firecracker.

So now, Italy is taking crowd control very, very strictly, since it has been shown now that Italians don't exactly react rationally when it comes to these types of things. The crowd for Festa del Redentore fireworks is usually about 50-60,000 people, far more than can fit into Piazza San Carlo in Torino. So they have put it under very tight control to prevent something happening in Venice.

This time there is, "numero chiuso." That means that they are limiting the number of visitors. The most popular places to watch the fireworks, meaning all along Piazza San Marco, down Riva dei Schiavoni (all along the Bay), Zattere, and Giudecca will be cordoned off, and once a certain number of people get in, the area will be closed. It is a real sign of prestige and localness to have a boat and see the fireworks from the water. Not permitted anymore. The water will be tightly patrolled. There will be several empty vaporetti along the water in case of casualties where some people need to be quickly evacuated. There will be loudspeakers, shouting out instructions to the crowd. There will be corridors barricaded off to partition the crowd into smaller groups, and to provide clear corridors of escape should people panic, so no need to stampede.

These open corridors will also allow police to run to a place quickly if they need to get somewhere. Within each cordoned off crowd there will be policeman circulating to detect anyone trying to set off fireworks. There will be large signs with arrows, pointing to exit routes for each sector, so that a quick evacuation won't result in almost everyone trying to run down one single street, as happened in Torino. There will be sailors standing by who will be dispatched into any group that seems to be forming into a rowdy crowd.

And yes, there will be turnstiles in San Marco. People will only be allowed into Piazza San Marco through a few narrow, tightly controlled gates, and only a certain number of people will be allowed through these "turnstiles."

This will be a completely different Festa than in the past. So sad. I'll hold off and go to Venice next weekend.

mkjr

Perche, i dont blame you. I ended my trip to Italy with a few days in London.

I remarked to my wife that I was surprised at how close cars were still allowed to get to sites with many tourists.

Having basically had to walk by many armed men to get into major sites in Rome (the best was the guy who basically stands in front of the door to the Scala Sancta and eyes you up and down and makes you walk around him to get in) and actually felt good about it, we then went to Buckingham Palace and thought to ourselves, being around large crowds was not something either of us felt good about unless there was a very strong police presence and some way to block these types of attacks. that was on may 21 and then on may 23, things had all changed around Buckingham Palace.

in fact, even recently here in Toronto when they had some concerts for the national holiday celebration, large vehicles blocked the main entry ways into the areas where there were tens of thousands of people which was a first for me in Toronto. But I felt safe really.

Just like I never minded the two armed vehicles on Via del Fori Imperiali to make sure any vehicles basically had to come to a crawl to get by.

It is a new world now.

Perche

Last summer while in Rome I asked a few taxi drivers why Rome wasn't as packed as usual. He told me, "paura," or fear. I asked him if the fall off in visitors was country specific, and I won't get into what was said. Rome is even less crowded now, and I've been asking people in bars why that is so. They all say fear. I responded this year the same way that I responded to the taxi driver last year.

And that is, speaking aa an American, I don't believe we would ever change our travel plans based on what has been happening. BTW, neither the taxi driver, nor any of the bartenders said that they noticed a drop off in visitors from the USA. I didn't decide not to go to Venice out of fear. I just don't want to be stuck in such a crowd.

Now, I didn't post this when it happened, and maybe I shouldn't, but about six weeks ago they broke up a terror cell in Venice that was preparing to blow up the Rialto Bridge. The Italian police were onto them from the beginning. They just roped them all in before intervening.

I don't think that people cancel visits to NYC, Rome, London, or anywhere else they want to go, based on fear. I appreciate the extra security as well, but only where it is warranted.

About 8 months ago some professional thieves set off a few very large smoke bombs in Piazza San Marco in front of the Basilica as a diversion to police so that they could rob a swank jewelry store in the Piazza (there is a thread in it). The robbery was averted when a bartender across the Piazza noted suspicious activity in the store while it was supposed to be closed for lunch, and called the police.

What about the police who were assigned to patrol the Piazza that the smoke bomb was supposed to divert? They never showed up. They were found taking a nap in the back room of a store a few blocks away.

That was a major wake up call. Venice announced that it was going to hire 100 additional policemen. They only hired about 15, last I heard. Why? There were only 15 applicants for the job. Then I started seeing advertisements Italy wide for people to apply to be a policeman/woman in Venice. Very strange, when youth unemployment is currently 40% in the South, and because when someone in Italy gets any government job it is considered as, "Ho vinto la lotteria!!" Or, I won the lottery. It's a job for life, you can't be fired unless you do what those policemen did in San Marco, and you retire very early at nearly full pay, early enough for you to start a second career and now have two incomes, so you can support your 35 year old children still living at home because they can't find a job.

It's a peculiar country, but I can't stay away for more than a few months because I've never seen people who smile and laugh as much, no matter what the situation, and everywhere you turn there is such beauty. And the food, your still thinking about what you ate last night the next day when you wake up. .

obscure2k

"It's a peculiar country, but I can't stay away for more than a few months because I've never seen people who smile and laugh as much, no matter what the situation, and everywhere you turn there is such beauty. And the food, your still thinking about what you ate last night the next day when you wake up. ."

Beautifully stated, Perche

Perche

The fireworks at Festa del Redentore went off without a hitch. Here is a few minute video of some of it. You can see by the finale why I believe that Venetians do fireworks particularly well. It starts with an advertisement about the parking lot that you can ignore.
http://www.veneziatoday.it/cronaca/v...e-venezia.html

Perche

The crowd management at Redentore last night was considered a great success. The Mayor and the Ministry of the Interior seem to be in lock step for the first time to save Venice, with their recent announcement to ban cruise ships as soon as they build the new docks in Marghera.

They just announced now that based on the success of last night, they will have virtual "turnstiles" to t control access into the San Marco area by the end of the year, more or less.
I'll summarize the key points of this article, but you can see by the picture in the article, the crowd heading into San Marco is not good for locals or for tourists. (the 2-3 items in parentheses are my thoughts, the rest is a translation of the key points of the article.
http://nuovavenezia.gelocal.it/venez...ref=hfnvveer-2

Headline:
Governance of tourism. Piazza San Marco will be declared a monument with controlled access to get into it, with an experimental reservation system.

Key points of the article:
By the end of the year Venice will have a reservation system and establish control of the access ways into the San Marco area, as an experiment. The way Festa del Redentore was managed, with controlled access into the San Marco area, counting the number of people in each area and limiting it to a certain number and then saying, "that's it," proved that's the way of he future.

The data gathered during the experiment will be very useful for us to get control of the San Marco area. There won't be a fixed number, rather, it will be controlled, so that how many we let in will depend on the particular circumstances of that day and night (in other words, what is going on. They will obviously allow more people in during certain Holidays and events.).

What was revealed yesterday at City Hall is the most significant Territorial Tourism Planning Project Venice ever had, approved by the mayor, to control tourist flow into the city. A "blessing" of the plan by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage appears imminent.

The experiment will require tourists to get an entrance ticket to get into the controlled San Marco area. The system will be adaptable to weekends and museum events where greater turn out is expected. Venetians will of course, be exempt.

In the first phase, security personnel with electronic control systems will be in place at every possible entry way into the San Marco area. Even boats sailing into the area will be under control.

Another part of the plan is public education (Basically, teaching tourists to stop being a pain in the butt by not blocking bridges that the locals need to cross by sitting on them to eat lunch, or blocking them to take selfies, sitting on the steps of churches to have a picnic, jumping off the Rialto Bridge, using the Grand Canal as a swimming pool, walking around shirtless, feeding pigeons in San Marco Square, etc.). This will be multi-faceted with public announcements, signs, social media, and online information to sensitize tourists to the uniqueness and proper decorum to have in Venice. These announcements will be by famous movie stars and singers. The name of the campaign will be, "Enjoy, but Respect Venice."

The Project is called the Dodecalog of Venice (I think that means 12 rules or measures, but I'm not sure), making it clear to visitors not only what is banned, but how to actually visit the city well, with proper behavior and decor. There will be a Board of Directors in charge of managing tourist flow into the city. The plan is the result of great and prolonged efforts in participatory democracy.

By this plan we are throwing a rock into the pond that will have ripple effects and help resolve a problem that exists not only in our region, but in Milan, Rome, Naples, and Florence.
-------------
I say, thank goodness, finally.

Perche

Interestingly, during the Festa last night, they already projected the words of the new project onto the Campanile (Bell Tower) in Piazza San Marco.

socalflying

Perche,

Thank you so much for your detailed descriptions of this plan. You wrote that the number of people allowed into the Piazza area would change depending on circumstances. I am sure these plans have not been completely announced, so I realize I am probably asking you to make predictions, but I was wondering if you knew if time-of-day would be considered as well. I like to get up early and take sunrise photographs such as those of the Piazza, or across the canal to San Giorgio Maggiore. Do you believe a reservation would be necessary for, say, 07:00? Also, do you believe time of year would matter? For instance, if visiting in February or March as opposed to June, would reservations be required during the slower times of the year?

Perche

I wouldn't worry about this. Last night when a cordoned off area was full enough a guard at the entrance would hold up a sign that said in Italian and in English, "this area is now full," and people were turned away.

They deliberately did not set a numerical quota in the new plan because there has to flexibility for times like last night, or like Carnevale, or special museum exhibits, or religious masses at Basilica San Marco like Easter or Christmas, etc, where they will let more people in.

They will respond to that flexibly. For example, last night they had to accommodate 50-60,000 people. It was cordoned off in such a way that every single person had their knapsack or purse checked before they could get near San Marco through controlled gates.

It's also a custom for locals to watch the fireworks from their boat on the water. This time they had sailors on something like water jet skis to check the boats before they allowed them to get too near.

There is no way that Venice wants to reduce tourism. They just want to manage it. There is zero possibility of them stopping you, or you requiring a reservation at 7AM, or most normal times. I also doubt there would be any requirements for a reservation at any time in February or March except during Carnevale. They just want to have a plan to exert that when necessary, at least according to my reading.

From November to April Venice is not crowded except for certain events. They are not going to come anywhere near bothering you.

Most of the time, I suspect you will not notice anything, but there will be some sort of counting system. Every now and then an alert will be triggered telling the control that they are nearing capacity. That is never going to happen at 7AM or in February or March, except for holidays.

Really, don't worry. Don't change your plans, or think twice. You are not the type of tourist they are trying to keep out. You are the type of tourist that they are trying to preserve Venice for, so that it will be everything you wanted when you first thought of going there.

socalflying

Thank you, Perche, for your further insight. I appreciate it! Yes, I'll avoid the time of Carnevale, so shouldn't be a problem. My next two trips to Venice are 8 nights in early October, then 9 nights late February. Can't wait to get back to La Serenissima!