WATCH: Venice’s Mayor labels water skiers ‘arrogant imbeciles’

The Mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro offered to buy dinner for anyone who could identify two water skiers who zipped through the UNESCO world heritage site last week.

The pair were captured on camera water skiing down the Grand Canal.

“Here are two arrogant imbeciles making a mockery of the city,” Brugnaro said in a tweet.

“I ask everyone to help us to identify them to punish them.”

His call was answered, and within a day the pair (seemingly living in Australia) were identified and fined 1,500 euros each, had their boards confiscated and left Venice (though media reports are contradictory about whether they were forced to leave or did so voluntarily).

Brugnaro has called for mayors to be given ‘more powers’ to ensure ‘public safety’.

Venice police regularly hand out large fines and even ban people from the city centre under numerous rules on ‘decorum’, introduced following countless episodes of visitors causing damage or upsetting residents, says The Local.

According to the Venetian newspaper Il Gazzettinothe the two individuals were fined 1,500 euros each for endangering the safety of navigation on the canal and were immediately expelled from Venice.

Italian media reports that the city has contacted lawyers and plans to sue the duo for damaging the image of Venice. That image is carefully protected in a place which struggles to balance tourism, rising waters and resident’s lifestyles. Italy’s cabinet declared Venice a national monument in 2021 and stopped vessels weighing more than 25,000 tonnes from entering. Its new flood barrier was successful in saving the city from floods for the first time in October 2020.