# Venice in numbers

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2021-02-28

chris-allnutt, covid-19, financial-times, italy, pandemic, port-city, travel, urbanism, venetian-lagoon, venice

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5168a2ecabbbdb5db0822b4ddc6fc75f.jpg)

Here are some interesting figures about Venice take from [this recent FT article by Chris Allnutt](https://www.ft.com/content/ff4c32eb-b34e-4638-a0c9-1c6656906b02):

*   Tourist visits to Venice last year were estimated to be about 1/5 of what they usually are
    
*   Short-term rental bookings as of December 2020 were down about 74% year-over-year
    
*   It is estimated that short-term rentals normally represent about 12% of homes in Venice (this is significantly higher than the "typical city" which is estimated to be about 1-2%)
    
*   Even before the pandemic, average property prices had declined from about €4,500 per square meter in 2018 to €4,341 in 2019 (2020 data is still coming)
    
*   Pre-pandemic, the population of the city was about 50,000, which is less than a third of what it was back in the 1950s
    
*   A 2018 study by Airbnb reported that for every local Venetian the city had 74 tourists on average (wow)
    
*   Being a dominant port city, the city has generally been disproportionately impacted by plagues and other health crises throughout its history
    
*   [The Lazzaretto Vecchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazzaretto_Vecchio), which still stands today, is a small island in the Venetian Lagoon that was founded in the 15th century as a hospital to care for plague victims; apparently it was the first of its kind in the world
    
*   During the 15th century, Venice saw its population drop by about two-thirds as a result of an epidemic
    
*   At the height of the Republic of Venice in the 1790s, the city had a population of about 170,000; after falling to Napoleon it halved to about 96,000
    
*   It's worth pointing out that the "height of the republic" occurred after many great epidemics; the subsequent population decline was seemingly the result of a conquest and not pestilence
    

_Photo by_ [_@canmandawe_](https://unsplash.com/@canmandawe?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) _on_ [_Unsplash_](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/venice-in-numbers)*