When Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and world’s third-richest man, marries Lauren Sanchez in Venice this week, the couple will mark the occasion with three days of celebrations costing up to €48m.
With motorcades of speedboats gliding past centuries-old palazzos, paparazzi jostling on gondolas, and a guest list that read like a Forbes index of influence, the billionaire’s nuptials will be a dazzling display of twenty-first-century opulence. But while the champagne flows freely inside the frescoed walls of a Renaissance villa, outside, the waters will be anything but calm.
As luxury yachts idle outside the city’s crumbling foundations and helicopters ferry VIPs over its fragile rooftops, environmentalists accuse Bezos of symbolising the very worst of global excess: unsustainable tourism, unchecked wealth, and the privatisation of public heritage.
“Venice is not a playground for the super-rich,” one protestor shouted from a dinghy near the Giudecca Canal. “It’s a city on the brink—sinking both literally and socially.”
Their anger is not without cause. Long before Bezos’s wedding party arrived, Venice had become a case study in the costs of overtourism. The city welcomes some 20 million visitors a year—roughly 55,000 a day, far outstripping its 50,000 full-time residents.
Many locals have fled rising rents and dwindling services, driven out by Airbnb takeovers and the relentless arrival of cruise liners. In their place: souvenir stands, selfie sticks, and, increasingly, private events that treat the city as a rentable backdrop rather than a living, breathing community.
“At a time when climate change is flooding this city, when public services are crumbling and ordinary Venetians can’t afford to live here, this is the last thing we need,” said Giuseppe Caccia, a spokesperson for the Venice-based group Biennale Urbana. “It’s a celebration not of love, but of inequality.”
Greenpeace was particularly scathing. In a statement the organisation accused Bezos of “hypocrisy at the highest level,” citing Amazon’s sprawling carbon footprint and the billionaire’s investment in space tourism. “While Venice sinks and the planet burns,” the statement read, “billionaires dance in palaces paid for by the exploitation of workers and ecosystems.”
City officials were quick to strike a more diplomatic tone. “Private events contribute to our economy,” said Luca Zaia, the President of the Veneto region. “They bring global attention, jobs, and investment. Of course we must balance that with sustainability—but we cannot turn away the world’s elite.”
That balance, however, has become increasingly precarious. Venice’s inclusion on UNESCO’s endangered heritage list remains a looming threat. Recent flooding has reached alarming levels even outside the traditional high-water season. And earlier this year, the city introduced a controversial tourist entry fee aimed at curbing the daily influx. Critics argue it does little to address the deeper rot: the erosion of civic life in favour of spectacle.
For many Venetians, Bezos’s wedding is the final straw. “He arrives by yacht, surrounded by billionaires, then vanishes behind palace walls,” said Claudia Martinelli, a local shopkeeper. “This is what Venice is now—a film set. We clean up after the credits roll.”
The irony, of course, is that Bezos himself has spoken publicly about the fragility of Earth. In 2021, after returning from a brief jaunt into space, he declared: “You look at the planet and you realise how fragile it is.”
Yet his footprint, both metaphorical and literal, tells a different story. Amazon’s warehouses continue to consume vast tracts of land. Its delivery network, powered by diesel vans and air freight, remains one of the most polluting in retail. His private jet logged over 100,000 miles last year alone.
It should be noted that Bezos has donated €1m to Corila, a consortium that studies Venice’s lagoon ecosystem, local media has reported.
No one begrudges a wedding, even a lavish one. But when that wedding becomes a metaphor for everything that’s gone wrong in a historic city drowning under the weight of tourism, wealth, and climate change, it is bound to provoke protest. And for Greenpeace and many Venetians, this is not just a party—it is a provocation.
