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Saturday, 14th November 2009
Mock funeral mourns Venice´s shrinking population
A procession of gondolas accompanied a pink coffin along Venice´s Grand Canal today in a mock funeral to protest against thesteep decline in the city´s population.
Pall bearers in black capes accompanied the flower-draped coffin symbolising the death of the “Queen of Adriatic” at the handsof rampant tourism, rising waters and housing costs, a low birth rate and a lack of services.
It was brought ashore at the city hall where a message of condolence and a poem in the Venetian dialect were read out.
As tourists and onlookers took photos and popped wine corks, a flag bearing the image or a phoenix emerged from the coffinto symbolise the rebirth of the threatened city.
The protest, organised by local website Venessia.com, was inspired by a report last month that the city´s population had fallenbelow 60,000, the minumum for an Italian city.
Venice´s population has halved since 1966 as residents have left to seek work elsewhere and housing costs have soared ashomes have been converted into hotels or guest houses.
Taking advantage of the crowd gathered for the protest, researchers from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the UnitedStates took saliva samples to identify authentic Venetians genetically, Ansa news agency reported.
More information: http://www.venessia.com/funerale.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCKzf9pjEIE
