"Se Venezia muore": is the restricted access a feasible solution for excess tourism?

In 2017 the traditional ‘Redentore’ feast in Venice was celebrated as usual on July 15th with a provisional boat bridge crossing the ‘Giudecca’ channel and a great pyrotechnic spectacle, but, for the first time, with an important innovation: the quaysides from where the spectacle could be seen where accessible only under control, until a maximum allowance (fixed by public administration) will be reached. The reasons of ‘public security’, motivated by reference to the dramatic events of St. Carlo square in Turin , hide an experiment that can lead to a stable solution for restricting, or keeping under control, the access of the tourists also to the whole historic center of Venice. The over-crowding of tourists is felt as one of the big reasons of the decay of the image of the city, and a real damage to his fragile consistency, menacing eventually the survival of the city even more than the high water tides that periodically submerge vast parts of the town. Venice can be taken as a paradigm of the difficult compatibility between the excess of tourism and the public enjoyment of cultural heritage: from one side, it seems unquestionable that the more renown excellences of the world heritage has to be left open to public access, from the other it is clear that in the age of mass tourism all these precious survivals of the past has to be carefully protected from the damages that tourism itself would produce. Moreover, these damages involve not only the physical matter of cultural heritage, but also the intangible heritage, destroying what can be regarded as the ‘spirit of the place’, often the main reason of the uniqueness of some sites. On the opposite, the ‘Camino of Santiago’ can be an example of nearly intangible heritage, made by historic paths in the country, small churches and villages that are evidences of the pilgrims of the Middle Ages: the survival of the ‘Camino’ is strictly connected to the ability of preserving intact the spirit of the places, without being overwhelmed by economic opportunities that the tourist arrival will offer.