“I met four people I needed to see this morning walking to school. Where else can I have a village life in an international city?” she said.
INTERNET
For those bucking the trend by moving in, the Internet is proving crucial. Once a week Scibilia orders vegetables from an Excel file e-mailed by the vegetable-growers on the lagoon island of St Erasmus and joins a queue on the quayside to pick up her order when the boat comes in.
“This does not have to be a city stuck in the past,” she said. “When experts dream up perfect cities, without cars and livable, it’s Venice.”
But back in Via Garibaldi, a filled-in canal which is the nearest Venice has to a high street, a handful of shoppers tightened their coats against the cold last week as they passed the numerous boarded-up shop fronts.
Watching them from the till at the bakery, Enrico Crosara’s mother Angela said she was not so sure Venice was set for a rebound.
“Ten years ago there were four of us behind the counter and the queues stretched out the door on a Saturday morning,” she said. “Now there are two of us and we spend most of the time staring out the window.”
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