They were the photos that went round the world: Shoals of fish swimming through the Venice canals; an empty St. Mark’s Square; the milky-white Rialto Bridge, free of milling crowds. The city that had struggled so publicly with overtourism in the past few years—an estimated 30 million visitors annually to a city-center with just 50,000 residents—was, it seemed, reclaiming its identity in the pandemic.

“We went from 100 to zero,” says Paola Mar, former tourism councillor for the Venice authorities, who now serves as councillor for heritage and promotion of the area. But is that a good thing? While those on the outside eagerly shared videos of crowd-free canals, Venetians were less happy. For them, those photos meant economic ruin—and more.