If you’ve always dreamed of working remotely from a Venetian gondola, you might be interested in Venywhere.
The new platform, which was launched in December 2021 by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and nonprofit group Fondazione di Venezia, offers concierge services to digital nomads who want to move to Venice.
It was designed to attract remote workers to the historic city and help boost its dwindling population, which has fallen from 174,000 to around 50,000 since the 1950s.
“The pandemic has created a large population of highly skilled people who want to move,” Venywhere founder Massimo Warglien told Business Insider. “This is a way of repopulating Venice.”
The initiative will also help fill the city’s vacant residential and commercial properties.
“This isn’t an expensive project because we are using what is already there,” Warglien said. “So many structures in the city are only half-used.”
While Venywhere was inspired by Tulsa Remote, a program that lured digital nomads with a $10,000 grant, it isn’t offering cash incentives to incoming residents. Instead, for a fee, it promises to make the process of moving to Italy as easy as possible.
Check out: How to become a digital nomad in 2022
According to its website, the platform will give you “everything you need to live a unique, safe and frictionless remote worker experience in Venice” through a single, easy-to-use portal. Available services include visa and tax assistance, apartment viewing, language lessons, coworking space reservations, healthcare advice and activity recommendations.
The services are supposed to immerse you in the local culture and help you “become Venetian.”
Venywhere is also creating a network of Wi-Fi hotspots and coworking spaces throughout Venice to make it easier for remote workers to connect with each other and build a community.
The platform, which is in the beta testing phase, is currently accepting applications for its first pilot group.