It Was Venice

In 1976 Venice had 100.000 inhabitants. Nowadays, after just a bit more than 40 years, the population living on the island has been halved to leave room for the daily pace of the tourist masses. With its 25 million visitors a year, Venice welcomes about 70,000 tourists a day, exceeding the number of residents. The city empties as its inhabitants are leaving and it becomes an open air museum, a lifeless attraction for tourists who often just make hit and run visits. It Was Venice aims at documenting closely this process by creating awareness about the fate to which Venice is incurring, a fate that the outside world doesn’t acknowledge as in the popular imagination this island is only a place to be seen at least once in a lifetime.