Associazione Piazza San Marco
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PRESS CONFERENCE TO MARK THE END OF THE ‘SAN MARCO GUARDIANS’ SERVICE

The press conference called by the Associazione Piazza San Marco to mark the end of the ‘San Marco Guardians’ service for this season was held today in the Caffè Florian at 11am. The service, offered by the association with the sponsorship of Costa Crociera and the cooperation of the Comune di Venezia, was provided from 9 July to 25 October 2016. A good 22 guardians aged from 18 to 55 supervised the square with great professionalism, informing tourists of the regulations in force in St Mark’s Square and providing a valuable service to combat squalor and hawking. This was a big help to the tourists, which was made possible, as the president of the association Alberto Nardi pointed out when opening the press conference, thanks to the guardians’ knowledge of different languages: not only English, French, Spanish and German, but also Eastern European languages like Romanian, Moldavian and Russian, and Oriental languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Syrian. Nardi recalled the importance of the project and the need to ‘institutionalise it’, or to have greater collaboration from the Comune di Venezia, taking up the idea of the San Marco Guardians to expand the service to other parts of the city, possibly financing this with the tourist tax provided for by the city administration. The councillor for tourism Paola Mar also spoke at the press conference, thanking the association and all the ‘San Marco Guardians’ for the excellent work performed and emphasised the administration’s engagement with tourism problems. Councillor Mar did not commit herself for next year, stating that she is thinking about the Guardians service but that, at least for the present, is unable to promise anything. Finally, the important contribution made by the pupils of the Barbarigo hotel institute, who in August assisted the ‘San Marco Guardians’ in the not simple work of protecting the Square as an educational exercise obtaining school credits, was highlighted. In the photo some moments during the press conference at the Caffè Florian.