Preservation in the tourist pressure’s era. From the Way of St. James to the Rialto Bridge area: some suggestions on a un-sustainable consumption of heritage

Anyone who deals with conservation/restoration knows that preserving architecture necessarily entails granting its use and/or accessibility. At the same time, use causes the deterioration of materials, potentially shortening the building’s lifespan. An essential issue in conservation field is constantly seeking a balance between the use and the cultural imperative to preserve monuments for future generations. The 21th century is facing a new emergency: the recent fragilities shown by both the monuments and the historical sites highlight significant difference between a careful use of heritage and its commercial exploitation. Due to the size and its inherent characteristics, the city of Venice is a clear example of the phenomenon and in particular the Rialto Bridge which underwent restoration between 2015 and 2017. The pressure of mass tourism has reached levels that are incompatible with maintaining the residents’ quality of life and perhaps with the city’s own survival: an estimated 27 million tourists a year flock to the city (54,000 inhabitants), mainly concentrated between the two poles of attraction: St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge area. The surveys carried out at the Rialto Bridge prior to the restoration work showed that physiological phenomena of building materials decay are significantly less impacting than the deterioration caused by tourist pressure, improper uses and vandalism. Consumption, damages, graffiti and also the occupation of public land aggravated by the decreasing quality of the local shops are the prices that the monument is paying in the face of such phenomena. A significant part of the intervention and its associated costs was aimed at curbing the effects of this emergency. Nonetheless, restoration alone cannot be the answer to the problem. State and local policies/actions geared to managing visitor movements also constitute part of the matter. The paper proposes to deal with another central issue concerning strategies aimed at educating people to a different kind of tourism, promoting cultural and social approaches capable of educating travellers rather than consumers.