For Americans and Japanese, Venice is a once-in-a-lifetime vacation destination; for Europeans it is a preferred weekend destination for romantic couples or a stopover for tourists on their travels through Italy. No wonder, then, that over 20 million tourists visited Venice last year alone. A mass invasion completely out of proportion to the city's size and its resident population which fell by 70% in the last 50 years, precisely because of the decline in the quality of life associated with the daily onslaught of visitors. <%YOUTUBE=FdaTK80kBtc%>
