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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Saving Venice. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired May 11, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Full of supermarkets but all of them send only the highest price thing because tourists buy it anyways. The only way to save the city is keeping the locals in. Otherwise it's going to be like an empty box.
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HILL: As Venice has really leaned into tourism, many locals feel they're being forced out. But they don't say you have to do away with visitors all together. It's just that there may be a better way to welcome them. And they warned that not addressing this issue actually threatens their very survival.
I hope you will join me for a look at not only the challenges but the solutions as we take a look at different ways to save Venice. I promise you this hour is absolutely beautiful and it's also a little surprising, Jess.
DEAN: All right. Sounds great. Be sure to tune in to "SAVING VENICE." It's an all-new episode of "THE WHOLE STORY WITH ANDERSON COOPER," one whole hour, one whole story. It's next only on CNN.
Thanks so much for joining me this evening. I'm Jessica Dean. We're going to see you right back here next weekend. Have a great night.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to THE WHOLE STORY. I'm Anderson Cooper.
The Italian city of Venice is stunningly beautiful and unique. It's made up of more than 100 small islands linked together by a unique system of canals and bridges, which is why it's become known as the city of canals and has long been a top tourist destination. But the number of visitors swarming Venice each summer has reached records in recent years. Tourists are motivated to come now, fearing the city might one day sink due to climate change.
As you'll hear in this hour, many Venetians say that rising water is not their main concern, however. Their way of life is changing, and they say not for the better.
CNN's Erica Hill went to Venice to find out why.
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ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR AND NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Piazza San Marco, Venice.
For centuries, on the third Saturday of July, one of the world's most iconic public squares transforms into the backdrop for a historic celebration. La Festa del Redentore. Packing into San Marco Basin, lining the shores at communal tables, neighbors and strangers alike, sharing food, community. Basking in the beauty of this ancient city.
Yet what began in the 16th Century as a tradition to unite the Venetian community has in recent years become a symbol of its modern day challenges. The solemn procession to the Church of the Redeemer, now overshadowed by an all-day floating dance party.
There's no denying this is a great way to spend a Saturday. But for many locals, Redentore has lost its meaning. Their own festival has become dominated by tourists. Many Venetians have stopped attending altogether.
It's that reality which led us here. Tens of millions of visitors flock to Venice every year, but thousands of its residents have been leaving. You've likely heard that Venice is flooding and sinking. But many locals say the real threat to their city isn't the water, it's the flood of tourists.
We came to better understand the Venetians determined to stay, and their growing dread that their beloved Venice may be dying.
Like many first-time visitors to Venice, I had grand ideas about what this floating city would really be like.
Bustling crowds, ancient buildings. Not this.
This farm is about -- you've had it for years?
CESARE BENELLI, NATIVE VENETIAN AND RESTAURATEUR: This is the fourth year.
HILL (voice-over): welcome to the island of Sant'Erasmo, one of more than 100 islands that make up Venice. Cesare Benelli, a native Venetian and restaurateur, believes this land could help Venetians chart a different future toward a more authentic Venice and a more sustainable one.
BENELLI: We also have an acre, 3,000 plants of artichokes. Artichokes has been cultivated in Venice forever.
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HILL: Benelli's project, "Osti in Orto," or the hosts of the garden, is a farming collective of more than a dozen Venetian restaurant owners.
BENELLI: We reach almost 80 percent of the needs of the 14 restaurants that they are part of the (speaking in foreign language.) HILL: Mm-hmm. The collective. Why did you have to create this?
BENELLI: One reason was to supply produce at zero mileage. And the second idea, the second part of the idea was to preserve, to mark the territory. We have a feeling, most of my colleagues, that we are losing the land from our feet now.
We are not interested in numbers of tourism. They are too many. And the city cannot hold these numbers. It's a disgrace. Those numbers. So we want to promote equality tourism. Respect the value of the city itself, but also of the territory which the environment, which is very delicate and unique. For us, it's more intimate and very valuable.
HILL: And this is part of it.
BENELLI: And this is a part of it. We are in the heart of these ideas.
HILL (voice-over): After touring Osti in Orto, Cesare brought me to his personal farm, where a group of locals joined us for a true farm to table lunch and a passionate conversation about the future of their home.
This is delicious. Foreigners come and they think Venice is sinking, we have to save it. When you hear save Venice, what does that mean to you?
MICHELA BORTOLOZZI, FOUNDER, RELIGHT VENICE: Respect Venice when you come here, understand where you are.
HILL (voice-over): Michela Bortolozzi is an accomplished artist, born and raised in Venice.
BORTOLOZZI: Always I ask, do you know that we have cinema, we have school? Oh, really? We have a swimming pool. Two swimming pool in town. I can't believe it. Yes. But lots of people doesn't really know really how Venice work.
HILL: Why do you think that is?
MATTEO SILVERIO, CO-FOUNDER, REHAB: I mean, mostly because there is no cars. So people say no cars, no life.
HILL (voice-over): Matteo Silverio is a trained architect who specializes in computational design. He and his wife have decided to raise their family here in Venice, despite its many challenges.
SILVERIO: Most of the time I argue with tourists. They say, OK. Do you usually stand in the middle of the street during the rush hour? No. They will kill you. Either a bike or a car. So that here, this is a street. This is not a pedestrian way. This is a nice place to take pictures. Now they are all made of selfies. And they take selfies on the top of the bridge.
BORTOLOZZI: Pretending nobody passing by.
SILVERIO: Pretending they're passing. ELENA ALMANSI, VENETIAN COMPETITIVE ROWER: Yes. Let you stop --
SILVERIO: They are ruining my pictures. No. I'm just going home.
ALMANSI: In my opinion, there are two different things. One thing is what the politic can do and another one is what the citizens can do.
HILL: 32-year-old Elena Almansi is as Venetian as it gets. She is an accomplished competitive rower, taking after her mother, a well-known rowing champion and Venetian artisan.
ALMANSI: people who live in Venice lose their sanity totally because you're surrounded by people who do not know how to, you know, act like a normal person. They just throw the garbage into your windows because it's open. They have to act exactly like if they are in their own city. OK. It's not because you're in a vacation, you can do whatever you want. It's not that.
EMANUELE DAL CARLO, VENETIAN ENTREPRENEUR: Venice is the canary in the coal mine.
HILL: How so?
DAL CARLO: This is like a microscopic petri dish of everything that could go wrong with tourism.
HILL (voice-over): Entrepreneur Emanuele del Carlo has launched nearly a dozen businesses in Venice, from an advertising agency to a tiramisu shop.
DAL CARLO: A lot of people think that saving Venice must come from outside. And instead, save Venice, it must come from inside. People travel to know, to learn. If a city is not able to teach them how to behave, it is the city's fault. So excuse my French. It's going to be some bloody off if you do anything in Venice. So you just do enough to guarantee yourself to be elected again without scaring too much the people, scaring too much the investors or something like that.
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Because, yes, Venice is going to rot away, but it's going to happen not tomorrow.
CESARE PARISE, CHARITY ORGANIZATION PRESIDENT: Well, I agree with Emmanuel, but also with Elena.
HILL (voice-over): Cesare Parise is president of one of the city's oldest charity organizations, which today provides residents with critical social and medical aid.
PARISE: Because if Venice is a city, we don't need now to speak about tourists. We have to speak about the life of the city and the people who choose to live inside.
HILL: Does Venice still feel like a city to you?
PARISE: No.
DAL CARLO: That's why I say it's a canary in a coal mine because you can see it 10, 15 years in advance what can go wrong when the stakeholder of the city are not involved in the planning for the city and when the tourism is not managed because tourism is good. Tourism is a force for good. Make people less racist, make people happier. Make people more knowledgeable, more democratic because they understand each other.
BORTOLOZZI: And depend if these tourist that doesn't stay one day, this tourist doesn't make them more knowledge.
HILL: So is that the answer, though, getting rid of a person who just comes for a day?
BORTOLOZZI:: Yes.
ALMANSI: We are all talking about the same thing. Like I mean, no population, no houses, too many tourists, Airbnb destroying everything, the politic is ruining the city as well. These are the problems of the city.
SILVERIO: I have problems with my kids, for example. There is no schools. I mean, there are schools, but they are less and less. They are closing. I mean, there is no vision. We are just living day by day, because I guess we are just now in a process to choose if the city will die or will survive, at least.
HILL: You care deeply about Venice, so you must still have some hope. You're not giving up.
PARISE: No. No. No. Personally not. No. It's against my nature.
DAL CARLO: Until the end of the day.
HILL: Yes.
ALMANSI: Hours at least.
HILL (voice-over): When we come back --
So many people feel they have to come to Venice before it sinks or it floods.
GEORG UMGIESSER: People should really stay calm.
HILL (voice-over): How to see the real Venice.
It's your escape to be on the water.
ALMANSI: Totally, 100 percent.
HILL (voice-over): A lesson in traditional Venetian rowing.
I understand why you say this is so peaceful.
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ALMANSI: So if you ask a rower, why do you row in Venice? Just try once and you understand.
HILL: Then you know.
(Voice-over): Since arriving in Venice, I've been told on more than one occasion that the only way to really see this city is from the water.
ALMANSI: Sometimes I just think like how beautiful Venice had to be before the motors, before the invention of these noisy friends.
Here in Venice, we're all standing up in the other side. So we face the front of the boat. We see where we're going. We don't need to carry an extra person on the back to drive and scream, row, row, row. We don't want this kind of things. We do everything by ourselves. It's the only place in Venice in which you can't go if you're not a Venetian citizen.
HILL: So it's your escape to be on the water?
ALMANSI: Totally, 100 percent. Because it's a way to still have the feeling that you own your city, kind of. Because when you walk around, you don't have this feeling. Like you kind of feel that you are a stranger, a foreigner, you know, in your own place. But while you are in the water, you can like feel how magical the place Venice is.
HILL: What do you think rowing means to Venice as a community?
ALMANSI: It's a big thing for all the people, for most of the people who take part in the races. The races are actually the Olympic Games, so you take it very seriously. You train every day. For me, it's important because it's like a family tradition, we can say. My mom used to row in the rowing regattas, my dad as well. So I kind of keep the tradition alive. And not only the rowing tradition, but my family tradition.
HILL (voice-over): You'd be hard pressed to overstate just how deeply rowing runs through the veins of this city and families like Elena's. Her mother, Anna, retired from competitive racing years ago, yet remains fiercely committed to keeping the tradition alive. Anna now proudly makes the flags for winners of the city's regattas which she meticulously crafts and paints by hand.
ALMANSI: Twist, drop, and push. All the way straight, yes, and return back. Yes?
HILL: OK.
(Voice-over): Elena has discovered her own way to help preserve the culture of rowing in Venice, through teaching.
ALMANSI: And straight, yes. And return back. We are moving. HILL: Hey.
ALMANSI: It's working.
HILL: Who knew?
ALMANSI: You have Row Venice, in which we teach basically the tourists how to do this, to let them know what rowing means.
HILL: How have the tourists changed in your lifetime?
ALMANSI: Like the door was open for five minutes, and tourists came in without even asking or realizing that this is a house. Like, where are you going? There's a sort of disrespect. Not all of them, of course. They don't understand that the place is not there for them, but they are here for the city.
HILL: Do you worry about, as a Venetian, the soul of the city for people who live here? Do you worry about that going away?
ALMANSI: Yes. It is slowly going away because locals are going away.
HILL (voice-over): In recent years, residents have been leaving Venice in droves. Population peaked back in the 1950s at nearly 175,000. Today, roughly 50,000 call Venice home. And the impact runs deep.
ALMANSI: Everything changed because less locals means less services. Less services means less locals. It's a chain that keeps going, a circle. So you struggle to find a family doctor. You go to the supermarket, which is full of supermarkets, but all of them sell only the highest price thing because tourists buy it anyways.
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The only way to save the city is keeping the locals in. Otherwise, it's going to be like an empty box.
HILL: You're determined to stay.
ALMANSI: Si.
HILL: Your parents are staying?
ALMANSI: Si.
HILL: Can you change things?
ALMANSI: The only way to change things is, like, raising our voice, to raise our voice so we must be more than 49,000.
PARISE: This is the boat of Venetian, not the boat of tourists.
HILL (voice-over): Cesare Parise is another avid Venetian rower raising his voice.
When did you first learn to row? PARISE: Oh, I was a child.
HILL (voice-over): He's president of a leading aid organization and also the steward of one of the city's remaining boatyards, known as Squeros.
Grazie.
PARISE: This is a gondola under construction.
HILL: This is fantastic.
PARISE: Yes, it's beautiful.
HILL: And it smells so good.
(Voice-over): Here, Venetian craftsmen build and repair the city's boats using techniques passed down over centuries.
How long will it take to build this boat?
PARISE: We say we need 400 hours.
HILL: 400, wow.
PARISE: And you can split them on the two month, three months, or just (INAUDIBLE), one month or two weeks. It depends.
HILL: It all depends.
PARISE: Yes. We have 46 types of boats, and they are all boats that are really fantastic. I was born over there, just around the corner.
HILL (voice-over): But like Elena, Cesare fears this may be the last generation to experience Venice the way he does.
PARISE: Lost in the city walking is something you can do anything in the world. Lost in the city on the boat is something you can do only in Venice.
HILL: What do you think Venice will be like in 10 years?
PARISE: I don't want to answer that.
HILL: So you don't want to think about what it might be in 10 years.
PARISE: No.
HILL: How urgent are the problems now, the problems that you see with tourism and housing?
PARISE: Oh, no. Venice is just dying. Venice is dying or maybe Venice has died.
HILL: Already dead? PARISE: Yes. A friend of mine says, saving Venice, we are saving the
world. Because if you find a way to help tourists in Venice that don't kill the city, we maybe find the theory, the method to save all the city of the world.
HILL (voice-over): Of course, mass tourism isn't the first challenge this city has faced.
It's not going underwater.
GEORG UMGIESSER, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF ITALY: Not yet.
HILL (voice-over): Up next, battling the rising sea.
UMGIESSER: It's a very good temporary solution that buys us time.
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HILL: Since its founding, Venice has drawn power from its relationship with the sea as a line of defense and a gateway for trade, for sustenance and for sport, and famously, as a dazzling playground for artists and dreamers.
There is no Venice without the water. And yet, for much of the last 100 years, the sea that gave Venice its power has been working against this city and its survival.
Acqua Alta, literally high water in Italian, has been a part of Venetian life since the Middle Ages. But its intensity began to change in the 19th Century as the Industrial Revolution helped usher in climate change, a rapidly heating planet, and rising sea levels, contributing to more frequent Acqua Alta events, more intense flooding, and greater threats to this floating city had its existence.
While visitors may still need to pack their rain boots, the chances of their Venice vacation being drowned out have largely disappeared.
So many people feel they have to come to Venice before it sinks or it floods.
UMGIESSER: Yes. I think people will still have a lot of time until Venice really sinks. So people should really stay calm.
HILL: You don't have to rush.
UMGIESSER: No, you don't have to.
HILL: It's not going underwater.
UMGIESSER: Not yet.
HILL (voice-over): Not yet thanks to this engineering marvel, the MOSE, a first of its kind barrier system hidden on the sea floor. When the water is forecast to reach a certain level, the 78 flood gates are raised, closing off the lagoon and the city from the sea.
Since coming online in 2020, the MOSE has dramatically shifted the impact of an acqua alta on Venice.
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The MOSE, the barriers, came up today.
UMGIESSER: Yes.
HILL: What does that change for San Marco?
UMGIESSER: So it changes a lot. Especially the shops are not underwater anymore.
HILL: Right. So this is manageable now?
UMGIESSER: That's manageable.
HILL (voice-over): Georg Umgiesser is an oceanographer who studies how global sea level rise is impacting the lagoon. His models help to forecast when those very expensive MOSE gates should be raised.
If there were no MOSE, what would the water level be like here?
UMGIESSER: Well, depending on the lowest points, which is about 80 centimeters, it would come up to here probably, 30 centimeters. So Venetians say, oh, there's no climate change anymore. Yes? We are safe. But we're not safe. Venice was very useful for this to show the world that this is happening.
HILL: Yes. Is it a solution or is it a band-aid?
UMGIESSER: It is a temporary solution for the next, let's say, 20 or 30 years. Then with climate change, we will get higher and higher water level, and then the MOSE has to be raised not 10 or 15 times, it has to be raised 30 times, 40 times, 50 times, and then it gets out of control.
HILL: Yes, absolutely, especially with such a long day. So in this room is where the decision can be made to raise the MOSE.
GIOVANNI ZAROTTI, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, CONSORZIO VENEZIA NUOVA: Si.
HILL: How often is it used?
ZAROTTI (through text translation): We have estimated, on average, about 20 closings per year. This is almost double the original plan.
HILL: How much is too much for the MOSE? When would you not be able to use it anymore?
ZAROTTI (through text translation): So, from the structural point of view, the MOSE should be able to ensure safeguarding even in the case of rising sea levels. Nevertheless, the consequence is having to close the barriers more frequently. HILL (voice-over): It's yet another new challenge Venice now faces. As
global sea level continues to rise, the gates will need to be raised more frequently, but raising the MOSE more often than originally intended is not only expensive, at approximately 200,000 euros each time, it also comes with serious concerns for both the city and the lagoon itself.
UMGIESSER: So if you have to especially close it for longer times, like two days or something like this, and you have stagnant water in here and it maybe it starts to smell and so on. Second problem is that if you have to close it too often, the ships cannot come through anymore. How much does that cost? Yes.
HILL: Where do you think the biggest issue lies?
UMGIESSER: Communicating this to policymakers. Yes? Because policymakers think ahead of maximum five years. Yes? We have to really think ahead 50 years or something like this.
We let the world talk about Venice, often for the wrong reason.
HILL (voice-over): Coming up, the search for solutions.
Have you ever thought about reaching out to Airbnb to say, hey, can we partner on this?
DAL CARLO: Actually, they reached out to us through their lawyers.
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DAL CARLO: What I fear the most is the slow dying, the slow drop, every day something dies of the local community and gets substituted with something that is global.
Venice is slowly transforming itself into a dying showroom.
HILL: A dying showroom?
DAL CARLO: Yes.
HILL: I've heard amusement park.
DAL CARLO: Yes, amusement park as well. But I don't see a lot of fun here for tourists, honestly, because you are surrounded by other tourists.
I think we are really on the verge of losing completely the fact that this is just a place where people work for tourism, and it's not a community anymore. I keep on saying we have 101 percent responsibility of the way Venice is now as Venetians. There's a lot of activities in this town that Venetians never do. For example, we only get on a gondola if we get married or when we die. I mean, it's like going on a horse cart on the New York Central Park. I don't think any New Yorker goes on those. HILL: So to that point, do you think Venice as a city needs to market
itself differently?
DAL CARLO: Absolutely.
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We let the world talk about Venice, often for the wrong reason. Venice is sinking. Venice is depopulating. Venice stink. And think it's important that we are trying to attract people or to maintain here people that is clever and entrepreneurial, because that is in the genes of the city. Not a city of shop owners and renters. That's what it has become.
HILL: A lot of the people I've spoken to have talked about the housing crisis in this city, which a lot of other cities around the world can relate to. That's an issue you've been trying to solve.
DAL CARLO: Yes.
HILL: How difficult is that?
DAL CARLO: Extremely. We have this project called FairBnB.coop. It's a cooperative project. It's a kind of Don Quixote effort of trying to solve the systemic problem worldwide. We started from Venice because we have nothing against private property, of course. But if you rent 20 houses only to tourists, then you become a problem for your community.
HILL (voice-over): The city's already limited housing supply has been further stressed as more homes have turned into vacation rentals. The idea of FairBnB is to reclaim some of the city's housing for the community by enforcing some guardrails. Homes in the FairBnB network can only be rented out by residents, not foreign owners or corporate speculators. And there's also a cap to keep Venetian speculators in check.
Have you ever thought about reaching out to Airbnb to say, hey, can we partner on this?
DAL CARLO: Actually, they reached out to us through their lawyers. Trying to shut us down in the beginning for the name. I don't think that as a company, Airbnb is evil. I don't think it is. I think, again, is a brilliant idea for very talented individuals that has been able to amass an amazing power. And it's a pity that they are not able to -- how can I say -- balance this great power and great responsibility they have with the needs of the local communities, because there's not going to be another Venice. So once you have helped change this place forever, it's not going to come back.
HILL (voice-over): The mounting consequences of mass tourism have been apparent to Venetians like Emmanuele for decades. Now the city is finally starting to address it.
So this monitors the foot traffic.
SIMONE VENTURINI, DEPUTY MAYOR OF VENICE: Yes. People are arriving and people going out of Venice.
HILL (voice-over): In 2020, officials created the Smart Control Room, a monitoring hub where constant stream of data tracks and records the flow of traffic and people's movements.
So if I am here as a tourist, what do you know about me?
VENTURINI: Oh, nothing.
HILL: Nothing?
VENTURINI: No.
HILL: But you do track some general cell phone data?
VENTURINI: Yes. It's a calculation based on an algorithm on the market share of the roaming system. So we can know 100, 200 people from the States, or 1,000, 2,000 people from Germany are in Venice today. But we don't know who they are.
St. Mark's Square here, St. Mark's Square there.
HILL: You have a lot of pictures of St. Mark's Square.
VENTURINI: It's a very delicate environment, so it's very important. This is the base also to take decision, for example, the entry fee system.
HILL (voice-over): In 2024, Venice experimented with a controversial 5-euro entry fee for day trippers on select dates. The mayor has announced a similar plan for 2025.
Some critics, I know you've heard them say, it was too little, too late. It took too long. You didn't charge enough money. It didn't keep as many people out.
VENTURINI: Everyone has an opinion in this world, so we are all experts in everything. But after 50 years of debate, a lot of books are about the overtourism, about the dying city and the sinking city and so on, we are still here, and we are, I think, the frontrunner of a new way to better manage the tourism. The magic word is balance. We need to find a new balance.
FABIO CARRERA, VENETIAN PROFESSOR: This used to be water. And down here is where I used to live.
HILL (voice-over): Fabio Carrera grew up on the southeastern tip of Venice in Santa Elena.
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CARRERA: This used to be a bakery here.
HILL: But for the last several decades, he and his students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches, have been studying and documenting Venice's transformation from the water up.
CARRERA: I mean, we've done over 300 studies, so there isn't much that we haven't studied in Venice.
HILL: What about the tourist fee? Do you think that, you know, is, in the end, effective?
CARRERA: Not as a deterrent per se, but it has spread the news that Venice is crowded, and so indirectly, I think, may have created some second thoughts in people who might have wanted to come to Venice. I don't think that 5 euros is going to make a difference. I mean, it's a cost of a spritz. So I personally think that jobs are the core issue. Because again, if you can make enough money, you can buy a house. They're for sale right now. The next question is --
HILL: Where you live?
CARRERA: Right? But the third one is the one that people don't think about much is the urban mobility. So we have a very cool and quaint system of boats that takes us around, which is great. But it's not up to par with modern means of transportation, which could make a big difference if we had, say, a subway system, which was talked about for a while.
Because that could mean that you could live in Venice and work on the mainland and get there real quick. On the mainland around Venice, there's plenty of jobs, high tech jobs. All the stuff we're talking about bringing here already is there.
HILL: Do you see Venice dying?
CARRERA: Not really, no. I think enough people now realize that the tourism card has been overplayed now and there's going to be some sort of retrenching. It's already happening to a large degree.
There's big protests all over Europe over tourism, especially in Spain. That's how things change. I'm oddly optimistic about this. I mean, I don't think it's going to get worse.
HILL (voice-over): Fabio's optimism isn't entirely unfounded. If there's one thing Venice does well, it's adapt.
BORTOLOZZI: I want to build a community because if we are a community, we can fight.
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[20:52:00]
BORTOLOZZI: Nobody wants to leave Venice. We leave Venice because it's not affordable anymore for us. I wanted to work with my hand, and maybe in the future have my own studio. But the rent was so expensive. And so I thought that the only way to grow myself was to travel. But every time I was abroad, I was feeling Venice call me back. Then COVID came, so I had to come back in Venice. And it was the best time of my life in Venice. Venice was so beautiful. I started to love Venice again. I started to
meet people. Because before, you meet a lot of tourists and you don't really realize who is living close by you. And so I started to feel like I really wanted to do something. I thought it was the point to open my own shop. Luckily, the rent was coming down because of COVID, and now it's four years. I have my workshop. It's half workshop and half shop.
HILL (voice-over): Michela Bortolozzi is part of a new generation of Venetians hoping to revive the city's artisan traditions. Once a staple, local shops like Michela's have largely been driven out as vendors push mass produced goods with little connection to the city itself.
BORTOLOZZI: I can start from the name of my brand that called Relight Venice, and the idea is to give back the light to Venice. The first product I made it was a big, big lollipop, colorful one. I love colors. And the shape was coming from the column of Doge's Palace. So Gothic, Venetian architecture. So this lollipop, while you are eating this lollipop, having fun, walking around, at the end remain the stick.
So that was the question, you want to consume it or keep it, preserve it, and support it? And my point is that Venice is beautiful as my product, even much more. So just be careful. Don't consume Venice, because Venice, we cannot rebuild it or rebuy it.
HILL: It sounds like you think it can be saved.
BORTOLOZZI: Yes, yes, I'm sure of that. I think it's important that the people from abroad meet a local person to get to know the culture, get to know the tradition. So after that, he can maybe enjoy Venice in the nicest way and maybe help us to preserve it.
There is a lot of younger people that have my age that they start to open their own business, their own shop. We are all friends, so we also try to work together.
[20:55:02]
I want to build a community. Because if we are a community, we can fight. We can decide to stay.
SILVERIO: There are so many things to change, but there are so many opportunities.
HILL (voice-over): Michela's neighbor, Matteo Silverio, is a fellow designer and the co-founder of Rehab, a startup that's giving new life to Venice's world renowned Murano glass.
SILVERIO: Ten years ago, I started working here in Murano with glass master and factories. And I fell in love with the way they work.
I started looking at the nice thing and also the bad things. They produce a lot of waste. And unfortunately, this waste is not recyclable. Why? Because they have metal oxides to paint the glass, to make it red, blue, whatever the color you like. This is a problem. An ecological problem, but also an economical problem.
HILL: You figured out a way then to take the waste that couldn't be reused, and you actually are turning it back into Murano glass. How does that happen?
SILVERIO: I was a trial and error process.
HILL: A lot of trials?
SILVERIO: It's a learning by doing.
HILL: But you figured it out?
SILVERIO: Yes. What you see here is that these, either these, or this one, or this is 3D printed, it's entirely made of glass waste.
HILL: And there's nothing in here but glass? There's no plastic, no resin?
SILVERIO: No, no, no, no. So what you have here, it's completely glass.
HILL (voice-over): Rehab's innovative technique also requires a much lower temperature than traditional glassblowing. With no gas needed, Matteo says his process uses 70 percent less energy.
SILVERIO: I mean, for centuries, Murano has been the center of innovation, no, related to glass, of course. What we are trying to do is, of course, making Murano a better place, a more sustainable place.
So it's nice to stay here and fostering, in a way, the community and the economy of the island, which is important.
HILL: When you look at the future for Venice, what do you see?
SILVERIO: We have so many issues here. There's global warming is going on. We spend billions on building the MOSE. Yet, they are not enough. So this is another issue we really should take care of, at least thinking about it.
One solution that in part can help sustain Venice should be trying to rise a bit the city.
HILL (voice-over): Engineer Pietro Teatini has devised one potential solution to combat the rising seas and supplement the MOSE barrier, literally raising the city itself.
PIETRO TEATINI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN HYDROLOGY AND HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING: We inject saline water that we can take from the lagoon into deep aquifer where the water is already brackish. And if we inject properly with a sufficient pressure, then the result should be that the city would rise a bit.
HILL: And how much could you raise the city?
TEATINI: The amount is around 25, 30 centimeter. That is, I would say, quite interesting amount because more or less, it corresponds to the loss of land elevation that the city has experienced over the past century.
HILL: So how quickly could this happen?
TEATINI: In about 10 years.
HILL: So the MOSE cost $6 billion and took decades to do.
TEATINI: Yes.
HILL: How much would it cost?
TEATINI: It's -- yes. The order of magnitude should be around 100 million euros.
HILL: That's a big difference.
TEATINI: So much less, much, much less. This is the order of magnitude, of course.
UMGIESSER: I mean, if you think, there's 30 million people coming a year to Venice. If everybody pays 1 euro --
TEATINI: Yes. you have it.
UMGIESSER: Yes?
TEATINI: Yes.
UMGIESSER: So --
HILL: It's a nice idea. Who's excited about it?
UMGIESSER: We are excited about it.
TEATINI: We are. If the mayor now says we want to try this, he could have a place in history.
HILL: Do you think this combination of potentially injecting the seawater to raise the city, keeping the MOSE there as well, this combination could save Venice?
UMGIESSER: It buys us a lot of time, more than 100 years, probably.
HILL: There is no doubt the barrier protecting Venice today from being underwater will eventually be outmatched by global sea level rise. But there are possible solutions to both the rising tide and the challenges of mass tourism. The question is whether the city and the world will choose to save Venice.
