Merchants in Venice – heavy handed advertising.
You’ve held the picture, the framing, in your mind’s eye for a long time. You’re finally there, at last you’re visiting in the flesh, not online or on your coffee table … you turn the corner, your first real glimpse of Venice’s Palazzo Ducale, the Doge’s Palace … ah … scaffolding … ah well … it’s an old building … but that’s not the point, or at least it wasn’t this summer … the point was the, well, less-than-subtle advertising that shrouded large swathes of the frontage.
Yes it was corporate-global-brand-aspirational-lifestlye stuff, but it wasn’t all from fizzy America or techtoy Japan – there was home grown luxury wrapping to boot. And big names in the world of art have complained. This from the ‘Venice in Peril’ group (article link):
“We appeal to the Italian government to change the legislation that permits huge advertisements on the scaffolding of public buildings. Only ten years ago, Venice was a city without large advertisements. Today, they are proliferating. They hit you in the eye and ruin your experience of one of the most beautiful creations of humankind. Their scale dwarfs the fine detail and proportions of the buildings, and now that they are also illuminated, you cannot escape them even by night, when they are the hardest, brightest lights in town by far.
We ask you to imagine the disappointment that the 17.5m visitors to Venice this year will feel. They come to this iconic city with an image of it in their mind’s eye and instead they see its famous views grotesquely defaced.
To those who say that the money the advertisements bring is necessary to restore those buildings, we remind you that after the great flood of 1966, when Venice was in a much worse state and Italy a much less rich country, no one contemplated using this method to raise funds.
Other ways of financing restoration must be found, otherwise Venice is doomed to be covered in advertisements for the rest of its life because its buildings will always be undergoing work due to their great age and the environmental fragility of the city.
Finally, we remind you that Venice is a Unesco World Heritage Site and that a preceding government of Italy undertook to protect its essential nature in perpetuity when it accepted this nomination.”
Hotels in Venice, Italy
Tickets for visitng the Palazzo Ducale
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