Residents of Venice are to have their DNA samples taken today as part of a campaign to save the city — which has a population declining so fast that there are fears Venetians may soon be extinct.
The move is to provide a record of Venice’s residents, whose numbers have dropped to fewer than 60,000, nearly outnumbered by the 55,000 tourists who crowd into the city each day. According to Matteo Secchi, a local hotelier and campaigner for the revival of Venice, demographers predict that by 2030 there will be no permanent residents, leaving a ghost city sinking into the lagoon.
Mr Secchi said that when he began keeping a tally of the population three years ago, there were 62,027 permanent residents, compared with 145,000 in 1960. He and others formed an online campaign, Venessia.com, to hold a “funeral for Venice” when the number dipped below 60,000.
It did so last month, with a new low of 59,984. Today campaigners will take a three-gondola cortege carrying a symbolic red coffin through the canals from the railway station to the city hall, where local poets will deliver a “funerary oration”. Andrea Morelli, who keeps an electronic display of the population in the window of his pharmacy, said: “We have been abandoned.”
In the survey, the National Geographic Society in Washington said it was asking Venetians to supply DNA samples for a study conducted with the Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Massachusetts on “The Origins of the Venetians”.
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The work is part of a global project on DNA and human origins. Deborah Affezzoli, who is heading the research team in Venice, said residents would be asked to provide the DNA by placing a cotton swab in their mouths. The team hope to obtain up to 5,000 samples, she told the national La Repubblica newspaper.
Arrigo Cipriani, owner of Harry’s Bar, dismissed the scheme, saying that many residents did not have their origins in the city. “My own family, for example, is from Verona,” he said. Venice authorities have tried — with limited success — to discourage the daily influx of day-trippers who contribute little or nothing to the economy, and encourage more “upmarket” visitors prepared to stay in the city’s hotels and eat in its restaurants.
Mr Morelli said he hoped that the mock funeral would “spur a rebirth”.