Venice does not speak to its admirers, to its infinite numbers of fans who in more or less disciplined procession, present themselves to its countenance to breathe in its myth, letting themselves be shrouded by the languorous atmospheres of its legend. It allows itself to be seen, to be touched, but it does not speak. On the other hand, very few seem to be carrying a promise of change in this direction at the moment. It shines through that if the miracle was to come, the flows of “believers” would grow to uncountable numbers, seriously testing the city’s already insecure capacity in terms of its ability of welcoming and its ability to stay attentive.

Certainly, the catch and kill culture, spontaneously feeding a primitive economy of mere collecting, of capitalisation of the district, has changed the meaning of “welcoming” in a profound way. It has discouraged the accompaniment, the high level intermediation and any ideas of growth not merely based on quantity. It is a tendency of saturation. Absolutely, it has made emerge the desire for an equally spontaneous and improbable reduction of appeal, or even worse, of an intentional choice of quota system, by those who in mass tourism, see a mechanism capable of eroding all other vital spaces.

Put together, all this gets the taste of a depressive spiral and it certainly does not seem to presuppose a willingness on the part of the city, to regain grip of its own destiny, surpassing the current apathy and resigning passivity. Venice promotes itself; this is a date of fact. But that nevertheless does not make it possible to neglect the opportunity of beginning all the actions that are to be found at all sides of a promotional project and which constitute the necessity of its fulfilment. Who takes part, must be rewarded for her choice, just as much, and perhaps more than, those who are stimulated to take part through sophisticated projects of tourist attracting. Letting you be consumed passively, often with a badly hidden hate, means penalizing yourself. And it is in fact evident that the “Venice in itself” does not exist. It does not exist without its millions of visitors. To Venice, beginning to communicate with them means that the city begins speaking to itself. The ideas and projects for the city’s future must pass through a course full of relations. In fact, Venice has to imagine a social pact with its tourists, combining coherently “hardware” (the logistical management of access) and “software” (the capacity of dialogue, of preparation, of accompanying, of selecting among requests). In other words, Venice, spatially, temporally and culturally, has to anticipate the holidays, thus creating a kind of “halo effect” around the experiences of the visit. Venice can start “before” and go “beyond” Piazza San Marco. Speaking in logistical terms, as well alternative, original and temporally distributed access points are needed, in order to control the flows.

This kind of rationalisation is valid, even if we accept the hypothesis of the “Museum City” completely. In relational terms, we need to imagine moments of dialogue that would be fruitful for the partakers of the exchange, accepting the status of “special tourists” for a “special city”. Venice is a physical place, which is characterised by very particular environmental conditions and by an inevitable historical heritage, but it is also a “mind space” which transcends the permanence of its territory. Venice can and should “adopt” its visitors while at the same time “letting itself be adopted by them”. The exchange and the pact thus reside in a kind of citizenship of honour, which almost fully represents the precondition for that virtual counter-exodus that could bring back a potentially unlimited number of new stakeholders to Venice. Stakeholders that are attentive to the city’s development, to its choices and to its suggestions that should continually be stimulated to renew themselves.