A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
A banner in Venice this week showed the laughing face of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos blown up to giant proportions and spread across a plaza in Venice, Italy. Above the image, activists put the words, if you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax. It's one of several efforts meant to protest or even disrupt Bezos' wedding to Lauren Sanchez this week.
Tabloids report the celebrations have already begun. People Magazine, for example, published pictures of the couple at a foam-filled party on Bezos' superyacht. The Wall Street Journal's Margherita Stancati is also reporting on the wedding buildup and joins us now from Rome. So a big destination wedding with one of the world's richest people. What do we know about the festivities and who's going to be there?
MARGHERITA STANCATI: So we know very little because this event has been shrouded in secrecy. Wedding organizers have been extremely diligent about keeping the details of the wedding under wraps. But we do know it will be at least a three-day affair and mostly running from Thursday to Saturday. We know it's going to be a star-studded event that will happen across the city's tiny islands. And some of the guests are here already. We've seen images of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, and their kids. We have at least one superyacht moored in the city. And we know there will be about 200 guests.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. I've seen a DiCaprio sighting. I've seen a Kardashian sighting. So, yeah, definitely a star-studded event in Venice. So tell me, though. I mean, so why do activists want to disrupt the whole thing in the first place?
STANCATI: So Venetians are upset because they are tired of their city being used as a backdrop for luxury events, and also because it reinforces this image of Venice, essentially, as a playground for tourists. So it's not just about Jeff Bezos. It's about how the city has transformed and how it continues to transform. Venetians have an ambivalent relationship with tourism. The city's economy entirely depends on it.
But residents say that they feel outnumbered, and they literally are. You know, on an average day, tourists far outnumber the people who actually live there. And they - so they're pushing back against this image of Venice as a theme park. And by the way, some tourists literally think Venice is a theme park and they've asked locals questions such as, you know, where is the exit, and what time does it close?
MARTÍNEZ: I wish that weren't true, but I can totally picture tourists thinking that Venice is an actual theme park. Wow. All right, so what do wedding planners and the local government have to say about all this?
STANCATI: So the local government is really upset that these activists are threatening to disrupt the celebration because they're really in favor of this particular event, but also of this kind of tourism. You know, they are - they want to encourage high-net-worth individuals from spending time and money in Venice. What they don't want, you know, day trippers who maybe spend two hours in Venice and leave just with a sandwich in their hands.
So they're worried about the damage this could do to Venice's image and that it could discourage high-net-worth individuals from coming to the city.
MARTÍNEZ: You mentioned how Venice relies on tourism, but is there any concern about over-tourism in Venice?
STANCATI: Absolutely. You know, the population of Venice is around 50,000 people, and most days, tourists far outnumber that. And to tackle over-tourism, the local government last year actually introduced a daily entry fee on busy days. But, you know, it has done little to dissuade visitors from descending en masse on the city, and if anything, residents complain it actually reinforces this perception of Venice as a theme park.
MARTÍNEZ: All right, that's Margherita Stancati of The Wall Street Journal from Rome. Margherita, thanks.
STANCATI: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS SONG, "VENICE QUEEN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
