The Gritti Palace was inbuilt Venice in 1475, with no expense spared. Its chandeliers are product of handblown Murano glass, its bogs of polychrome Italian marble. Its terrace appears out over the Grand Canal onto a domed basilica. For years, it was residence to Venetian the Aristocracy, however now it’s a luxurious resort, the place suites can price €14,000 an evening. Final weekend, it was booked strong by a brand new type of the Aristocracy, in Venice for a brand new type of no-expense-spared spectacle: the marriage of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and fourth-richest man on this planet, and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV presenter.
The Trumps have Rome; the Bezos-Sánchez household, apparently, has Venice. In at the very least a technique, the town is an apt marriage ceremony venue for one in every of this period’s most profitable retailers. It’s an archipelago of sandy islands in shoal waters that, largely because of Venice’s placement on the head of the Adriatic, turned one of many Mediterranean’s dominant ports and one in every of civilization’s first facilities of worldwide commerce, by means of which the world’s spices, silk, fur, and jewels flowed for hundreds of years. It was, in different phrases, a metropolis that turned essential not due to what it made however due to what you might purchase there, the beneficiary of right-place-right-time magic that somebody like Bezos would possibly at this time name synergy.
For a few years, it was one in every of Europe’s richest cities, outlined by its ostentation and swagger, the spoils of all that wealth: mansions crammed with artwork, basilicas crammed with stolen artifacts, marble and gold in every single place you regarded, not possible magnificence rising from unstable floor. Immediately, Venice’s major trade is tourism, and its major export is its personal mythology. The Renaissance-era tradesmen are lengthy gone; of their place are folks there to gawk at what the Renaissance-era tradesmen purchased. Fashionable Venice is “an amusement park,” because the historian Dennis Romano, who just lately wrote a guide on the town, advised me. It’s a residing museum of obscene wealth. It’s regardless of the reverse of quiet luxurious is. It’s massive and literal, unapologetic and unrestrained, a kind of old-world vulgarity newly again in model, at the very least amongst folks so highly effective that they don’t have to care about style. (Ought to Ivanka Trump, a marriage visitor, have occurred to lookup whereas killing a day on the Gallerie dell’Accademia this previous weekend, she might need acknowledged one thing: The gold-leaf ceiling in the lounge at Mar-a-Lago was explicitly modeled after one on the artwork museum.)
The marriage festivities started with a foam celebration on a $500 million superyacht, continued with a welcome occasion at a church whose partitions are lined with Tintorettos, and culminated with a Friday-night ceremony on the identical secluded island the place the G7 as soon as met. The Gritti and different high-end accommodations have been crammed with visitors together with Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and a number of other Kardashian/Jenner sisters. Estimates have positioned the price of the entire occasion at someplace probably far north of $20 million. If the vibe of the marriage was, at the very least to some observers, cheesy, that’s irrelevant. Venice is wealthy—world-historically wealthy, one of many richest locations cash can purchase. It’s a spot the place even the bogs are beautiful, the place each sq. inch is drenched in magnificence, the place a marriage visitor or a former TV information anchor can really feel like royalty. After all Bezos and Sánchez needed to marry there.
Nonetheless, there’s one thing humorous about all of it: a pair whose wealth is derived from trendy comfort tying the knot in a spot so completely, proudly antiquated; Bezos, a person answerable for unleashing hundreds of supply automobiles onto American streets, getting married in a metropolis with no vehicles. Sánchez just lately climbed into a rocket ship and flew to the sting of house, however for one of the vital essential days of her life, she selected a metropolis the place probably the most environment friendly solution to get round is to rent a man in stripes to locomote you utilizing a way that has existed since earlier than Jesus was born.
Venice is now a sinking place, a spot being destroyed by modernity and consumption—air pollution, local weather change, mega-tourism. Moto ondoso—“wave movement”—from giant boats is eroding the centuries-old foundations of the town’s buildings. Venice has about 20 million vacationers a 12 months, and fewer than 50,000 annual residents. A lot of these on the town protested the Bezos-Sánchez marriage ceremony: They papered over the town’s historic stone partitions with flyers suggesting that Bezos depart, despatched effigies of him floating down the canals, and unfurled an enormous banner that learn, When you can lease Venice in your marriage ceremony you’ll be able to pay extra tax. Romano predicts (as do I) that the marriage and its attendant publicity will seemingly simply drive extra vacationers to the town. Everybody, in spite of everything, loves an amusement park—particularly folks with loads of cash to burn.
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