The road to knowledge is a road that passes through good encounters.
(Baruch Spinoza)
Luisella Romeo, Professional Tourist Guide
The importance of a professional and expert tour guide when visiting Venice.
The value of an expert, competent and extroverted tour guide can offer many advantages to enrich the visit to Venice: from lowering language barriers to recommending the best local non-tourist restaurants.
The right guide can build a personalized and exciting itinerary through the labyrinth of calli della Serenessima.
And if you’ve visited Venice countless times before, hiring a guide offers the chance to enjoy an unusual glimpse into a familiar place. A talented guide with loads of local knowledge will have something to offer even to those who think they have seen it all before.
A good tour guide always knows the best times to visit attractions, when prices are best, which places and times to avoid, what is closed or under construction, and any number of tricks and tactics that help you get the most out of one place much visited.
And when you are staying for more than a few days here in Venice, hiring a tour guide for the first two days can help you orient yourself at the beginning of the trip.
An educated tour guide can offer a depth of experience and knowledge that goes beyond guide snippets or the reading of a monument plaque .
Here in Venice we are very lucky, because we have many professional and experienced tour guides.
Some of them immediately joined the Anima Veneziana Project and little by little we will present them all to you!
Today we start with Luisella Romeo of seevenice.it, part also of BestVeniceGuides.
Who is Luisella Romeo?
About twenty years ago I became a tour guide in Venice, a job that I love very much and that allowed me to meet many people who, like me, are in love with Venice.
After university studies in Venice and the United States, I now live in the historic city.
In my guided tours I try to emotionally involve the people I am with, make them participate and active and at the same time bring them closer to the Venetian artisan realities. The past of Venice is more alive than ever and is made up of human stories that I love to tell.
Having said that, it is clear how much work is part of my life. In fact, I also love classical and opera music, photographing, rowing in the Venetian way, exploring the lagoon in our sailing sanpierota and swimming. And I love cats.
In Venice I feel at home because it is a highly international city, a mix of cultures, history and industry.
Why did you decide to support the project Anima Veneziana?
The Anima Veneziana project was presented to me by a dear friend with whom I share the concern for the future of Venice.
Venice is a city full of potential, positive and, even if fragile, it is lived by many people who believe in its future. Unfortunately, a pessimistic and alarmist view of Venice prevails and which must be countered.
I immediately joined this project with enthusiasm because it aims to present in the eyes of those who do not live here how many positive energies develop in this city. There is certainly a need for a future vision and a coordinated plan to prevent tourist monoculture from flattening Venice to a mere Disneyland.
I hope Anima Veneziana project can shift the perspective in which Venice is seen: from a victim city to a city that reacts, with creativity.
How do you dream your Venezia?
I don’t dream that Venice will go back to being that of my childhood or even that of when I was a university student. The past is not our future.
By creating the conditions for new work activities not related to tourism, it will be possible to expand the very idea of the city compared to how it was just before the Aqua Granda of November 12 and the coronavirus.
I like to think that in Venice there is a great synergy between craftsmanship, the arts and the university and, last but not least, sport.
I dream of a Venice where rowing and sailing are given an important boost.
I would like craft activities to find a particular importance in the economy of the city. I would like the university to expand further, occupying spaces that are currently unusable and focusing on the “hot” topics of the moment, from the economy of sustainable tourism to environmental emergencies.
For tourism, I am convinced that only a decrease can lead to quality and I dream that those who arrive in Venice will discover that they want to return and stay for a long time and enjoy the slowness typical of this city.
Thank you very much Luisella for everything you do for Venice!
You can donate to our Anima Veneziana project with a click below!
