When I first moved to Venice seven years ago, Amazon deliveries weren’t really a possibility. Like many aspects of life in this exquisite, maddening, addictive city, 21st-century conveniences like shopping via apps just didn’t function here.
For many Venetians, their hometown’s reputation as a place slightly out of time was one of its charms.
Yet the arrival of the billionaire circus that is Jeff Bezos’s wedding to Lauren Sanchez has fixed the eyes of the world not only on Venice, but on the anger felt by residents at the destruction of their way of life.
Today, the atmosphere in the world’s most beautiful city is distinctly ugly.
In my neighbourhood, Zattere, behind the Salute Church on the Grand Canal, the canals and alleyways are eerily quiet. Aside from an unusual number of mega-yachts – with smartly dressed crew bustling about the decks and heavies guarding the gangways – there’s almost no one about. Only the thump-thump of the helicopters ferrying guests from the airport on the mainland suggests anything unusual.
