Dear Aldo,
now you pay 5 euros to enter Venice if you are a daily hit-and-run tourist. If the intent is to discourage daily tourism, perhaps it won’t be enough to charge 5 euros to enter Venice. But will all day tourists pay this tax? And who knows what the controls will be like. I hope this doesn’t happen in other Italian cities too. Do you find this new tax correct?
Luca BarrettaFlorence
Dear Luca,
Venice is not a city like the others. She must be protected and should be reborn. And the only way to revive cities is to bring citizens back. For a long time the Venetians left. The houses are rented to tourists or sold to rich people who consider them a trophy and open them once a year. If the ticket also served to finance a low-cost rental policy for young couples, it would not be useless, on the contrary. Anyone who stops in Venice to sleep pays a tourist tax, which is higher than in other cities. Because those who arrive there with a backpack on their shoulders, don’t spend a euro, perhaps improvise a picnic in Piazza San Marco and leave in the evening should not make a contribution to the maintenance, restoration, mending as Renzo Piano would say of a fragile city, made of glass, of water, of wood that supports the stone? Massimo Gramellini said that the ticket was happily processed. Massimo Cacciari claims that it represents certification that Venice has transformed into a museum. They are both right. Perhaps the reality is even worse: perhaps Venice was an open-air museum; an open-air restaurant, a sort of playground, which even in this cold April foreigners wander around in Bermuda shorts and slippers because since they are in Italy they feel authorized to dress for the beach. Instead, it is possible to invest in theaters from Fenice to Goldoni, save the last cinemas (including those in Mestre) before they become supermarkets, ensure that there is a concert in churches every evening, in short, focus on quality tourism. All this has a cost, but experience teaches that it is not just a question of money, but of projects, of good will, of confidence in ourselves and in the future. It’s not enough to have Venice; you have to deserve it.
TODAY’S OTHER LETTERS
History
In the hospital I was looked after with love
I am driven by a great sense of gratitude to tell my experience, which demonstrates how the Sanit machine, in Piedmont, is efficient and well structured. Thanks to a genetic test, carried out with the Health Service, recommended by my doctor, I discovered that I was positive for a mutation called Brca2, which predisposes to a very high probability of falling ill, especially with ovarian and breast cancer. At the age of 47, talking to my gynecologist, I decided to opt for preventive surgery, which is still talked about too little. I underwent surgery at the Sant’Anna Hospital in Turin, in the Oncology Gynecology department, where I was followed in a commendable way, comforted in my fears and above all looked after and cared for by the staff who dedicate their heart and soul to this profession. Inserted into a screening program I was able to decide, with adequate information that the doctors provided me, to invest in my future, to put my life in the hands of doctors who still believe in public healthcare, that what is most precious we have in Italy. I think that often, as a cliché, we are led to say that Healthcare doesn’t work, that you have to wait a year to get a test, that doctors are never available and we pay for useless tests that only serve to replenish the coffers of a system that staggers. I have personally experienced that this is not the case and I don’t think that mine is an isolated case. Thanks to the work and sense of duty of these doctors, today I smile with an additional awareness: good healthcare certainly exists!
Signed letter
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