“There’s Venezia, its residents; and there’s Meta-Venezia, the tourists. Two parts of a symbiotic organism,” writes the Venetian writer Tiziano Scarpa in one of the essays that make up this magazine-cum-travelogue-cum-essay collection. This publication goes far beyond what any visitor can hope to discover about Venezia, however, pulling back the curtain on the intricacies of life in the lagoon. One essay takes the reader into the factories of Marghera, exposing Venice’s long history as a petrochemical industrial hub; another meets the region’s thriving Bangladeshi population; another explores the waters of the lagoon and investigates how its ecosystem is changing, even mutating, beyond repair – and what that means for the local economy and Venetian culture itself. More than anything, Passenger: Venezia justly depicts Venice as it is: not a static, open-air museum, but a vital city undergoing great transformation. This collection of writing will serve as an archival snapshot of what Venice was like in the 2020s. It rightly draws attention to the experiences and desires of the people living in the city now, their call not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to respect both the environment and their right to the city.

Catherine Bennett