THE COSTS OF NEW YEAR’S EVE 2014 IN ST MARK’S SQUARE

The city must pay more than 100,000 euros for the New Year’s Eve celebrations in St Mark’s Square. The assault of more than 80,000 tourists in the Square to greet the new year brought with it various disputes and the need to rethink and above all better manage events of this kind. The costs are owed to the various security firms at work during the night of new year’s eve, along with those of transport and the final cleaning up after the event. Furthermore, many people think that consideration should also be given to the fact that the celebrating crowd was an affront to the monumental area, as shown by various photos published in local newspapers. Alberto Nardi, president of the Associazione Piazza San Marco, spoke on this in the local press, saying that the celebrations ‘certainly went less badly than in the past, especially compared to when nothing was organised in the Square and there was no surveillance. It must be said that in this case the Square was checked by dozens of officers and this was a positive aspect. ‘Unfortunately’, he emphasised, ‘on these occasions a lot of ill-mannered people come to the city centre and create problems, as happened in this case with broken glass on the ground.’ This last aspect was taken up by Nardi who pointed out that, as in the case of the by-laws regarding the sellers of grain, in this case, too, a by-law was specifically enacted that prohibited people from taking glass containers into the Square, but then obviously no one was able to check in detail that it was respected. While appreciating the staff problems of the local police, the president of the Associazione Piazza San Marco thought that ‘it was necessary to keep an eye on the entire St Mark’s area’.

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