Virtually there – Venice Carnival 2024 without the crowds

By paulcolewriter5th Feb 2024 ( 2 )

IT is, says tour guide Olga Dudakova, a symphony of colour. Carnival is back in Venice, the city of love – and the grand squares and lagoon-side promenades are packed with costumed characters in their finest festival finery.

They’re also packed with tourists eager to take in the sights, sounds and scents of the Carnevale di Venezia. At times the city hotspots are so crowded that police have to help direct pedestrian traffic just to avoid carnival congestion.

That’s not a problem for those of us who have joined Olga’s tour from the comfort of armchairs around the world. She is one of the most popular guides working with the Together Virtually collective, which rose from the ashes of collapsed travel streamer Heygo.

Olga used to be a tour guide in Kiev but fled with her family at the outbreak of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has since lived in a number of temporary safe havens in Europe, hoping that she might one day be able to return home.

Due to present a virtual tour on the day of war’s outbreak, she instead charted her family’s frightening flight, first to a small Ukrainian village further from the danger zone, then eventually to Hungary to give viewers “a personal picture” of the conflict.

Now, she leads not only live-streamed tours from Europe on her YouTube channel but also recordings of tours she used to run in her homeland, featuring beautiful landmarks – some of which have since been destroyed in the war – and the peaceful land she loved.

Currently, she’s in Venice where she is presenting five days of virtual tours from the Carnival, from which the images in this post have been taken. There are three more tours yet to run later this week, details of which appear at the foot of the feature.

Olga is also working on an ambitious video project with the working title ‘1,000 Masks of Venice Carnival’ and, once that’s completed, I’ll feature it on paulcoletravels.com, so keep checking in for that. It promises to be suitably spectacular.

This year’s costumes once again live up to the rich historical heritage of the city, many channeling the romance of Venice, the intrigue of its hidden alleyways and the faded grandeur that attracts so many people that a tourist tax is to be introduced.

If a trial run this May proves successful, it will cost visitors around five euros per day to enter the city centre at peak times next year. The measure, together with new limits on the size of the cruise ships entering the lagoon, is probably long overdue.

It’s been some years since I last visited Venice for real, but each time I’ve been there it has always been crazily crowded – and that’s outside Carnival, which this year began on January 27 and runs through until February 13.

Much as I love the classical colour of the costumes, my favourites are often those which mirror the darker side of the city: the monochrome madness of the Plague Doctors; the grotesque Bautas – and surely that’s a modern day DC Universe Harley Quinn?

Olga wanders the city, taking in the sights and stopping not just to chat with revellers but also so that her virtual viewers can take screenshot souvenirs that they’ll later share with each other in Together Virtually’s thriving Facebook community.

She tells us how the origins of Carnival can be traced back to the Middle Ages when people, quite literally, danced in the streets after the military victory of the Venetian Republic over the Patriarch of Aquileia, Ulrich II von Treven, in the year 1162.

Not that it’s lasted quite as long as that might suggest. The festivities were abolished by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1797, and the wearing of masks was strictly forbidden, with harsh punishments for those caught flouting the decree.

It reappeared gradually in the 19th century, but only for short periods and private feasts, and was not fully revived until 1979 – civic leaders knew it would revive the fortunes of the city – and today, the event attracts three million visitors a year.

And now, as daylight begins to fade, I wonder what those original Carnivalgoers would have made of a throughly modern innovation – a costume that lights up in the dark?

If you want to get in on the act, but avoid the Carnival crowds, check out Olga’s upcoming hour-long virtual tours. They’re at 5pm on Wednesday February 7, and 3.30pm on both Thursday February 8 and Friday February 9. All times are in GMT.

Keep up to date with Olga Dudakova’s other travels and tours via the Together Virtually portal, her Marvelous Kyiv YouTube channel, or her Facebook tour page. All images in this post courtesy of Olga.