VENICE, Italy, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- A mock funeral through the famed canals may make Venetians aware of how few true natives remain in the city of water, Italian officials said.
Venetian residents this Saturday plan to escort a red coffin on a gondola through the canals to lament the city's shrinking native population, ANSA reported Thursday. By 2030, there may not be a single native Venetian left, Newsweek magazine recently reported.
The total number of native Venetians has shrunk to about 60,000 today from about 300,000 in the 1950s, largely because tourists are driving up consumer prices and forcing natives to cheaper, more livable cities, said pharmacist Andrea Morelli.
"We have to create a Venice residents will want to stay in," Morelli said.
In conjunction with the mock funeral, researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts are to take DNA samples from male volunteers with at least one grandparent born in Venice. The researchers aim to trace the roots of Venetians and their subsequent expansion across the region, ANSA reported.
