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 seems out over the Grand Canal onto a domed basilica. For years, it was house to Venetian the Aristocracy, however now it’s a luxurious lodge, the place suites can value €14,000 an evening. Final weekend, it was booked stable 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 the planet, and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV presenter.
The Trumps have Rome; the Bezos-Sánchez household, apparently, has Venice. In at the least a technique, town is an apt wedding ceremony venue for certainly one of this period’s most profitable retailers. It’s an archipelago of sandy islands in shoal waters that, largely due to Venice’s placement on the head of the Adriatic, grew to become one of many Mediterranean’s dominant ports and certainly one of civilization’s first facilities of world commerce, by way of which the world’s spices, silk, fur, and jewels flowed for hundreds of years. It was, in different phrases, a metropolis that grew to become essential not due to what it made however due to what you possibly can purchase there, the beneficiary of right-place-right-time magic that somebody like Bezos would possibly right now name synergy.
For a few years, it was certainly one of Europe’s richest cities, outlined by its ostentation and swagger, the spoils of all that wealth: mansions stuffed with artwork, basilicas stuffed with stolen artifacts, marble and gold in every single place you regarded, inconceivable magnificence rising from unstable floor. Right now, Venice’s main trade is tourism, and its main 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 lately wrote a e book on towninstructed me. It’s a dwelling museum of obscene wealth. It’s regardless of the reverse of quiet luxurious is. It’s large and literal, unapologetic and unrestrained, a kind of old-world vulgarity newly again in model, at the least amongst folks so highly effective that they don’t must care about style. (Ought to Ivanka Trump, a marriage visitor, have occurred to search for whereas killing a day on the Gallerie dell’Accademia this previous weekend, she may 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 superyachtcontinued 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 resorts have been stuffed with visitors together with Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and several other Kardashian/Jenner sisters. Estimates have positioned the price of the entire occasion at someplace presumably far north of $20 million. If the vibe of the marriage was, at the least to some observers, cheesythat’s irrelevant. Venice is wealthy—world-historically wealthy, one of many richest locations cash should 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. In fact 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 accountable for unleashing hundreds of supply automobiles onto American streets, getting married in a metropolis with no automobiles. Sánchez 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 essentially the most environment friendly approach to get round is to rent a man in stripes to locomote you utilizing a technique 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. Wave—“wave movement”—from massive boats is eroding the centuries-old foundations of town’s buildings. Venice has about 20 million vacationers a yr, and fewer than 50,000 annual residents. A lot of these on the town protested the Bezos-Sánchez wedding ceremony: They papered over town’s historic stone partitions with flyers suggesting that Bezos go away, despatched effigies of him floating down the canalsand unfurled an enormous banner that learn, If you happen to can hire Venice in your wedding ceremony you possibly can pay extra tax. Romano predicts (as do I) that the marriage and its attendant publicity will possible simply drive extra vacationers to town. Everybody, in spite of everything, loves an amusement park—particularly folks with loads of cash to burn.
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