Thousands of furious Venetians have marched in protest against large ships dubbed “sea monsters” clogging the city’s narrow waterways and destroying the lives of locals. An estimated 5.000 people took to the docks near Venice’s famous San Marco square to protest “bison of the sea” dominating the lagoon city that is a UNESCO world heritage site.
A massive cruise ship lost control as it docked in Venice on Sunday crashing into the wharf and hitting a tourist boat after suffering an engine failure. Tourists on the harbor could be seen running away as the 13-deck MSC Opera scraped along the dockside, its engine blaring, before knocking into a tourist boat, amateur video footage posted on Twitter showed.
A special commission approved this week a plan to divert cruise ships away from Venice's historic center by 2016, but activists seeking to rid the city of the giant ships expressed reservations about the proposed new route.