Of Course Jeff Bezos Got Married in Venice

The Gritti Palace was inbuilt Venice in 1475, with no expense spared. Its chandeliers are product of handblown Murano glass, its loos of polychrome Italian marble. Its terrace appears out over the Grand Canal onto a domed basilica. For years, it was residence to Venetian the Aristocracy, however now it’s a luxurious resort, the place suites can price €14,000 an evening. Final weekend, it was booked strong by a brand new sort of the Aristocracy, in Venice for a brand new sort of no-expense-spared spectacle: the marriage of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and fourth-richest man on the earth, and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV presenter.The Trumps have Rome; the Bezos-Sánchez household, apparently, has Venice. In a minimum of a technique, the town is an apt wedding ceremony venue for considered one of this period’s most profitable retailers. It’s an archipelago of sandy islands in shoal waters that, largely due to Venice’s placement on the head of the Adriatic, grew to become one of many Mediterranean’s dominant ports and considered one of civilization’s first facilities of worldwide commerce, by means of which the world’s spices, silk, fur, and jewels flowed for hundreds of years. It was, in different phrases, a metropolis that grew to become necessary not due to what it made however due to what you possibly can purchase there, the beneficiary of right-place-right-time magic that somebody like Bezos may at present name synergy.Learn: Welcome to wedding ceremony sprawlFor a few years, it was considered one of Europe’s richest cities, outlined by its ostentation and swagger, the spoils of all that wealth: mansions full of artwork, basilicas full of stolen artifacts, marble and gold all over the place you appeared, inconceivable magnificence rising from unstable floor. Immediately, Venice’s main trade is tourism, and its main export is its personal mythology. The Renaissance-era tradesmen are lengthy gone; of their place are folks there to gawk at what the Renaissance-era tradesmen purchased. Trendy Venice is “an amusement park,” because the historian Dennis Romano, who just lately wrote a e-book on the town, informed me. It’s a residing museum of obscene wealth. It’s regardless of the reverse of quiet luxurious is. It’s massive and literal, unapologetic and unrestrained, a sort of old-world vulgarity newly again in model, a minimum of amongst folks so highly effective that they don’t have to care about style. (Ought to Ivanka Trump, a marriage visitor, have occurred to lookup whereas killing a day on the Gallerie dell’Accademia this previous weekend, she might need acknowledged one thing: The gold-leaf ceiling in the lounge at Mar-a-Lago was explicitly modeled after one on the artwork museum.)The marriage festivities started with a foam celebration on a $500 million superyacht, continued with a welcome occasion at a church whose partitions are lined with Tintorettos, and culminated with a Friday-night ceremony on the identical secluded island the place the G7 as soon as met. The Gritti and different high-end lodges had been full of visitors together with Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and several other Kardashian/Jenner sisters. Estimates have positioned the price of the entire occasion at someplace probably far north of $20 million. If the vibe of the marriage was, a minimum of to some observers, cheesy, that’s inappropriate. Venice is wealthy—world-historically wealthy, one of many richest locations cash should buy. It’s a spot the place even the loos are beautiful, the place each sq. inch is drenched in magnificence, the place a marriage visitor or a former TV information anchor can really feel like royalty. In fact Bezos and Sánchez wished to marry there.Learn: What Venice can educate American citiesStill, there’s one thing humorous about all of it: a pair whose wealth is derived from trendy comfort tying the knot in a spot so totally, proudly antiquated; Bezos, a person liable for unleashing hundreds of supply automobiles onto American streets, getting married in a metropolis with no automobiles. Sánchez just lately climbed right into a rocket ship and flew to the sting of area, however for probably the most necessary days of her life, she selected a metropolis the place essentially the most environment friendly strategy to get round is to rent a man in stripes to locomote you utilizing a technique that has existed since earlier than Jesus was born.Venice is now a sinking place, a spot being destroyed by modernity and consumption—air pollution, local weather change, mega-tourism. Moto ondoso—“wave movement”—from massive boats is eroding the centuries-old foundations of the town’s buildings. Venice has about 20 million vacationers a 12 months, and fewer than 50,000 annual residents. A lot of these on the town protested the Bezos-Sánchez wedding ceremony: They papered over the town’s historic stone partitions with flyers suggesting that Bezos go away, despatched effigies of him floating down the canals, and unfurled an enormous banner that learn, In the event you can hire Venice to your wedding ceremony you’ll be able to pay extra tax. Romano predicts (as do I) that the marriage and its attendant publicity will doubtless simply drive extra vacationers to the town. Everybody, in any case, loves an amusement park—particularly folks with loads of cash to burn.​​If you purchase a e-book utilizing a hyperlink on this web page, we obtain a fee. Thanks for supporting The Atlantic.