I recently came across a thoroughly misinformed forum posting about Venice, by a guy named “Luke” back in 2005:

This is truly a beautiful city. I was there for a day (You can easily see it in a day) and went to all those places. The rivers are dirty as hell but the gondolas are just so so pretty and they make a good romantic trip (even the police and ambulance use gondolas). The neat thing about the city is the fact that in some places the street is just one person deep and you have to wait to let people in. As well, everything is incredibly small and they have all these really cool shops. Another really cool thing is to look at the people who live in the city because their apartments are so small. St Mark’s Basilica is one of the most interesting churches I have been inside. The entire ceiling is made of tiny mosaic tiles that would have taken years and years to build. Also, the plaza outside is the famous pigeon one and it truly is amusing. When I was there people where getting covered in pigeons. As well, I don’t think this was mentioned in the post but Venice is flooded quite a bit so through out the city they have these raised platforms which people walk on to get to where they are going.

In his post, Luke gets just about everything wrong, but he does make one good point, about the problems posed by pedestrian traffic in a city with such narrow streets. Now, Venice is one of the few places in the western world where the urban environment still exists on a human scale, and it makes it a generally wonderful place to be a pedestrian. That is, until the tourists show up.

Because the streets are so narrow, most of the corners are impossible to see around until you are virtually in the path of the suddenly visible cargo deliveryman pulling his heavy cart (and he won’t stop for anything). Add lost, window-shopping tourists fixated on a single objective – to take pictures, and on some of the city’s narrowest streets – and it can seem like they’re all conspiring to make my walk to work slow and annoying.

After having been here for a number of weeks now, I’ve discovered that there are several instantly identifiable types of pedestrians in Venice. Here’s what I’ve come up with:

• The window shopper: Likes to stop, often in a group of two or more, to look at the trashy trinkets for sale in virtually every store along the main pedestrian streets in the city (which are often quite narrow). Inconsiderate, oblivious, and ambles slowly between stores.
• The stop-and-chatter: Often Venetian, so more considerate than most, and often leaves the street to go into the establishment where they’ve recognized a friend. Makes sudden stops and can tune out everybody around them except for the acquaintance they’ve just noticed.
• The brief halter: Again, typically Venetian. Walks at a good clip when he/she decides to stop, for only a second or two, to check a cell phone, rummage in a bag, etc. Pauses just long enough to make you think you should pass, when he/she resumes walking again. Frustrating to follow.
• The bridge photographer: If tourists would take pictures of canals from the edge of bridges, all would be fine, but these tourists, invariably male, position a female significant other against the opposite railing and thereby bring traffic to a halt as they compose their picture. If they’re using a digital camera, I always keep walking – they can always take another if I ruin their shot (not for film, though). Like Alberto says: “I could make a painting in less time than it takes them to take a photo.”
• The map consulter: Open up a sufficiently detailed map of Venice to its full size and it can easily take up half the width (or more) of the street in which you’re standing. Tourists also love to check their maps on the tops of bridges, mistakenly thinking (goes my theory) that being elevated will somehow help them figure out where they are. If I hear them speaking English, I sometimes offer help to lost tourists, just to get them moving again.
• The child bicyclist: Bicycles are illegal in Venice, but little kids (Venetians) can often be seen riding them in certain parts of the city. Fine for the park in Sant’Elena, and in large campi like Campo Santa Maria Formosa, but not fine in narrow streets, as I’ve witnessed several times.
• The dog walker: Typically Venetian. Some keep the dog moving, but many indulge its desire to stop every ten feet to sniff at a trash bag or urinate on the side of a building, thereby putting the needs of their animal above those of their fellow human beings.
• The two-by-two: Can be Venetian or tourist, but regardless strolls through the city’s streets holding hands, arm in arm, or otherwise just side by side. Too busy conversing to notice the faster pedestrians piling up behind them.
• The middle-of-the-roader: It’s quite possible to get stuck behind a single person, if the alley is sufficiently narrow and if they’re walking right down the middle. I’ve found that the easiest way to deal with this situation is to cough or scuff one’s feet as one approaches, letting them know they should move to one side.
• The beer drinker: Always American, overweight, and male. Thinks that, because Italy seems more culturally tolerant of alcohol, it’s okay to stroll through the streets with an open bottle of beer in one hand. Should ask themselves how’d they’d feel if Italians came to their cities/towns and drunkenly wandered around downtown, with a spritz in their hands.

One of the biggest mistakes made by tourists is to stop on bridges. Unlike in calli and campi, where a certain amount of merging, entering, exiting, turning, and pausing to say “hello” is expected, bridges serve exactly one purpose in Venice: as critical thoroughfares connecting one island to another. That is, there is no legitimate reason to stop on a bridge, and doing so really should be avoided at all costs. But not only do tourists stop on bridges, they also sit on them, assuming those steps exist as a place for them to rest their poor tired legs, rather than as a major Venetian traffic and cargo delivery route. I derive enormous pleasure from watching groups of inconsiderate, bridge-sitting American students being yelled at, by deliverymen hauling heavy metal carts, to get the hell out of the way.

Tourists in Venice are very much like sheep, herded around by guides or signs pointing the way “Per San Marco”, and following the tourists in front of them rather than planning their own routes. Sometimes, I consider yelling at them, too, wanting to say “You fools! Don’t your realize that standing still in the middle of a calle is like stopping your car in the middle of a highway?” I never have the nerve, though, and even if I did, there would just be ten more inconsiderate tourists to take their place. Sigh…