Cose e figure di Venezia per i foresti = Objects and Images of Venice for the Foreigners

OBJECTS AND IMAGES OF VENICE FOR THE FOREIGNER Venice is the only major Italian and European city to have completely transformed itself into a widespread resale of tourist objects, which have occupied the ground floor of buildings scattered along the routes of its visitors. This transformation took place in the 1980s, around the celebrations of a carnival that was all about the façade and very invasive for the city, with an exaggerated multiplication of shops for the sale of masks. The continuous increase in tourism, with the launch of low-cost airlines and buses, has penalized the trade of original products dedicated to tourists. Murano glass has been replaced by low-quality imported products. The attempt to increase the trade of tourist gadgets in museums does not change the relationship between the souvenir buyer and the increasingly inconsistent meaning of these materials. The massified tourist object is often that which imitates characteristic products of Venice and Murano, but now all produced in Asia. The Asian production of tourist gadgets at negligible costs imitates products available in other Italian cities of art, juxtaposed with simple references to Venice: magnets, T-shirts, caps stamped with the name of the city, the winged lion of San Marco, the silhouette of the gondola, fragments of images of the carnival. The Venetian urban space adapts almost completely to tourist promotion, as if it were a widespread museum, or even an amusement theme park, full of surprising suggestions and souvenirs to buy. Keywords: Tourism in Venice, Gentrification, Tourist trade, Stereotypes about Venice, Venetian souvenirs