Population of Venice declining rapidly

A convoy of gondolas together with a pink coffin sailed along Venice’s Grand Canal on Saturday in a mock funeral to protest against the sharp decline in the city’s population.

Pall bearers dressed in black capes along with the flower-draped coffin symbolising the death of the ‘Queen of Adriatic’ at the hands of rampant tourism, rising waters and housing costs, a low birth rate and a lack of services.

The coffin was brought ashore at the city hall where a message of condolence and a poem in the Venetian dialect were read out.

As holidaymakers and onlookers took photos and popped wine corks, a flag carrying the image of a phoenix emerged from the coffin to symbolise the rebirth of the threatened city.

The protest, organised by local website Venessia.com was the spurred on by a report last month that the Venetian population has dropped below 60,000, the minimum for an Italian city..

The population in the Italian city has halved since 1966 as residents have left to seek work elsewhere and housing costs have soared as homes have been converted into hotels or guest houses.

Benefitting from the crowd gathering at the protest, researchers form the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the United States took saliva samples to verify authenticity of the genetics of the Venetians, according to a local newspaper article.