The Battle of Venice

By CATHY BOOTH VENICE

"When one wanted to arrive overnight at the incomparable, the fabulous, the like-nothing-else-in-the-world, where was it one went?" wrote Thomas Mann. "Why obviously . . . Venice." Italy's floating city, fragile as colored glass, has long been loved too well. Each year 2.3 million boisterous and devoted suitors importune this village of 79,000, clogging its narrow walkways, cluttering its wide canals, disturbing its hushed churches and driving its harried residents to distraction. Last summer when 200,000 fans camped in the Piazza San Marco for a Pink Floyd concert, it took the Italian army three days to clean up.

The toll that tourists have already taken seems a compelling reason for not inviting 23 million more. Which explains why so many defenders of Venice are dead set against a plan for the city to host Expo 2000, a four-month-long world's fair celebrating the turn of the millennium.

Next month the 47-nation International Bureau of Exhibitions (B.I.E.) will choose among Venice, Hanover and Toronto as hosts for the fair. A consortium of 40 companies, ranging from Fiat to Benetton, Olivetti to Coca-Cola, is mounting a vigorous campaign for the honor, arguing that the Expo would breathe life into the area's failing economy. But the city's devotees from around the world are convinced that if Venice wins, it will be lost. "The Expo would be a biblical disaster," says outgoing Mayor Antonio Casellati. "We would be signing the city's death sentence."

The European Parliament last week voted overwhelmingly to reject the project and called on Italy to withdraw its candidacy. The Parliament thereby joined its voice to those of 300 global lobbyists -- including Claudio Abbado, Giorgio Armani, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jacques Cousteau and Gore Vidal -- who have signed on as city defenders. The rabble rousing on the celebrity cocktail circuit has brought thousands of protest letters from around the world pouring into the B.I.E.'s Paris office. In Venice the city council remains categorically opposed, as do 63 organizations ranging from police to town planners. "Mounting a spectacular Barnum & Bailey circus is no way to solve real problems of sanitation, transport and tourism," says Alvise Zorzi, author of seven books on Venice and leader of the "No Expo" groups.

Nonsense, retort the Expo's supporters, led by Italy's Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis, who is using his position to pressure some of Italy's allies into supporting the proposal when it comes to a vote. He and his fellow advocates, including his brother Cesare and the business consortium, argue that the fair would transform Venice into the "new capital of Mitteleuropa," a center of communications and research. Half the local population has abandoned the city in the past 40 years, they note, leaving behind a hollow tourist playground built on a crumbling, honeycombed island. Without such an ambitious development plan, De Michelis claims, "Venice will become a Disneyland made for tourists only." He charges that opponents are unrealistic -- more concerned with saving churches than creating jobs. "They campaign against the death of Venice," he says, "but Venice is already dying."

Expo planners envision a vast, ultramodern "workshop of ideas" spread out over the entire 7,090-sq.-mi. Veneto region. The "ideas network" would be centered in the 80-acre Arsenale, the old shipbuilding yards of the Venetian navy. Along the edge of the lagoon, from the polluted petrochemical shores of Marghera to Marco Polo airport, a "Riviera of culture and technology" would be tied together by an aboveground metro. Planners promise that the construction would create 5,000 jobs, as well as a sophisticated electronics- and-communicati ons system to serve the city in the next century.

What the supporters cannot explain is how Venice could withstand an invasion of up to 500,000 visitors a day -- five times the city's capacity, according to the opponents' estimates. Even without the Expo, Italian tourism will reach record levels by the turn of the century: 2000 is a Holy Year, when tourists will flock to Rome, while Milan may be serving as host for the Summer Olympics. To spread out the traffic, Expo organizers propose holding their fair from January to April -- just when the canals most frequently overflow their banks. Argues Cesare De Michelis: "The idea of the Expo is to control tourism, not increase it."

The final decision lies with the obscure B.I.E. The European Communities' Environment Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana, an Italian, has demanded full environmental studies, and says triumphantly that doubts about the Venice site are setting in: "It will finish in the paper basket." But outgoing Mayor Casellati is still worried. "I'm going off to sail in the lagoon," he says. "Before they destroy it."