‘Love” is the universal greeting among Venetians. “Ciao, amore” can be heard hundreds of times a day here, but amore is in distinctly short supply when it comes to the impending wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez next week. As confirmed by the Corriere della Sera newspaper, the “Jeff in Venice” show arrives in La Serenissima on June 26 and the atmosphere in the city is as strained as the future Mrs Bezos’s cheekbones.

The ceremony is reported to be planned for June 27, with a final extravaganza the day after, but if every bride deserves bliss on her wedding day, one may find oneself feeling a teeny bit sorry for Sánchez. All you want to do is marry the billionaire of your dreams in front of a couple of hundred of your closest celebrity friends in the world’s most romantic city, and suddenly everyone hates you. All weddings involve niggles, from recalcitrant mothers-in-law to last-minute vegans, but few provoke mass protests or, as promised by local activists, outright anarchy.

Venice is no stranger to stratospheric extravagance. In 1574 the French king Henri III arrived in a galley rowed by 400 oarsmen, stopping by a loggia decorated with the works of Tintoretto and Veronese, accompanied by a floating furnace with Murano glass masters blowing sea monsters, and enjoying a banquet of 1,200 dishes at the Doge’s Palace. On arrival the king was shown the raw materials for a ship, which, during dinner, were assembled into a completed vessel, royal bedroom by Titian. Between Art Biennale and the film festival, Venice now plays host annually to a bigger concentration of stars than the Oscar ceremony. So why should the nuptials of a simple pair of well-meaning philanthropists attract such fury?

On June 12 a huge anti-Bezos banner was unfurled by the protest group No Space for Bezos on the steeple of San Giorgio Maggiore, one of the reported venues for the wedding. It was swiftly removed but reappeared the next day at a rally organised by the Morion social centre at the Rialto Bridge, where an enthusiastic crowd of about 300 applauded plans for further disruption.

“Venice is not an asset for sale,” declared the organiser Federica Toninello. “We don’t want to eat your crumbs — we demand dignity.”

Another of the proposed party venues is the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. In further bad news for the happy couple, activists have declared “Operation Bezos Won’t Pass”, calling for Venetians to block the canals around the Scuola with their boats on the evening of June 28.

• The real Lauren Sánchez — by her friends, colleagues and brother

Bezos may believe himself above gravity, above the weather and possibly (given his investment in longevity research) above mortality, but in Venice he has blundered into a perfect storm of passionate local politics. As in the US and UK, Amazon’s business practices have provoked controversy and strikes in Italy, but for many of Venice’s 48,000 remaining residents in particular, Bezos embodies everything that threatens their way of life. The city’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, has gloated on record that Bezos “did not choose Venice by chance”, and it’s arguably Brugnaro who is the real target of the activists’ ire.

Since his election by a majority of mainland voters in 2015, Brugnaro’s opponents allege that he has treated Venice as a cash cow, pushing hypertourism, which brought 20 million visitors last year, at the expense of public services. Brugnaro’s highly publicised “entrance ticket” has done nothing to reduce their numbers, rendering hotspots such as San Marco impassable by day, while locals find themselves driven out of the housing market, employment options are scarce, and public health and education have been scaled back. Although the hated cruise ships may be gone for now, the mayor has encouraged plans to dredge a new canal through the lagoon to enable them to return.

Moreover, Brugnaro has been accused of showing a brazen disregard for the boundaries between public and private assets. Since July 2024 he has been under investigation by the Guardia di Finanza, the Italian financial police, on charges of fraud totalling more than €100 million. Brugnaro has denied wrongdoing. In February the Venice prosecutor formally requested that the investigating judge charge Brugnaro. The judge accepted the request and Brugnaro is now awaiting a date for the preliminary hearing.

Also in February, Italian tax authorities accused Amazon of evading €1.2 billion in VAT payments between 2019 and 2021. Amazon contested the claim and said it would not comment on “ongoing investigations” but that it was “committed to complying with all applicable tax laws”. If the amount the company is accused of owing were divided equally between Italy’s 7,900 local authorities, they would each receive about €150,000.

Sánchez and Bezos may also be disappointed that the sheer size of the 417ft Bezos yacht, Koru, means it will have to dock at San Basilio, one of the dingiest areas of the city, whose outstanding landmark is the Conad supermarket. Sánchez might have thought that one through: for an award-winning environmental campaigner, arriving in one of Europe’s most unique and fragile ecosystems in a fume-spewing flotilla of mega-boats could look a little … insincere.

• Soros v Bezos: What battle of billionaire weddings tells us about America

Regarding looks, the bride’s wedding wardrobe remains as mysterious as the point of the Bezos Earth Fund, but Sánchez should note that heels in Venice are considered hopelessly naff. No one expects elegance from the Kardashians, but Sánchez’s faithful girl squad may want to practise emerging from a boat in 5in stilettos. And for the woman who wore lingerie to a presidential inauguration, the dress codes of the Catholic church may prove a challenge: no bare shoulders or plunging cleavage allowed.

Mayor Brugnaro’s suggestion that Venice ought to be grateful to Bezos for deigning to celebrate his wedding here has been mostly met with snorts.

“Even before he generously donated $10,000 to every Venetian we were considering which of the city’s squares to rename Campo Jeff, but now many believe it should be more than one,” quipped one Dorsoduro resident.

A rapid press release after Friday’s protest rally mentioned that Sánchez and Bezos are keen to involve local artisans, with the veteran Rosa Salva bakery and the Laguna~B glass company coming in for patronage, but locals are sceptical that much sghei (Venetian dialect for cash) will be passed on to the community.

For some Venetians, all too familiar with their home being regarded as a theme park, the wedding arouses little beyond weary resignation. “It isn’t a big deal for us,” explains Alvise, a water-taxi driver. “We’ve done similar, if not bigger, events; we’re used to them. But mass tourism is defacing Venice.” Contrary to earlier reports, only 30 taxis from the city’s fleet have been booked by Bezos, and the gondolieri expect to continue carrying customers as usual. Among the toffs who still inhabit their family palazzi on the Grand Canal, the Bezos circus is just a temporary embarrassment.

• Jeff Bezos wedding: what Venice thinks of his A-list invasion

“Vulgar, but what else do you expect?” was the verdict of one Venetian grande dame. And as for the Scuola, “it’s basically a corporate events centre. Anyone can rent it — a private palazzo would have been much smarter.”

“A bald by-product of a macroeconomic abomination,” commented another Venetian patrician, whose ancestors were among the founders of the city in the 5th century.

“It’s a disgrace that taxpayers’ money is being used for wedding planning,” commented the longstanding resident Michael Procino over coffee on his gothic terrace. “It reinforces the image of Venice as a stage set, nothing more than a backdrop for bridezillas.”