The Second-Home Buyers Taking Venice Back From the Tourists

How a new wave of homeownership is helping to revive the city's residential sector

- J.S. MARCUS

New Venice resident Tommaso Calabro has a few confessions to make.

At the end of 2023, the 34-year-old art gallery owner moved into a 14th-century palazzo in Venice’s central San Polo district, but he seldom cooks in his cozy kitchen, restored by a previous owner. And just about the last place he goes is at the top of the list of millions of Venice’s annual visitors—Piazza San Marco, where the traffic of day trippers has all but replaced the square’s once-iconic pigeon flocks.

“I am rarely in San Marco,” says Calabro, who paid $4.38 million in late 2023 for a 5,600-square-foot portion of the palazzo, which he has divided up into a high-ceilinged gallery space and a sprawling upper floor, two-bedroom apartment. Instead, he says, he prefers Zattere, at the lower edge of the historic center, where the spectacular light reflecting off the wide Giudecca Canal reminds him of classic Venetian paintings. “It’s my favorite part of Venice,” he says of an area that many tourists miss entirely.

Calabro, who currently divides his time between Venice and Milan, where his gallery has another branch, is part of a new wave of second-home buyers reinvigorating historic Venice’s residential sector.