Languages were always a strength for Orla McLaughlin at school, where she studied French and German. “I always wanted another language,” she says, so she settled on Italian and politics as it combined Italian with her interest in current affairs.
An Erasmus placement brought the Greystones woman to Venice and, having completed her degree in Italian and Politics at UCD, she returned to Italy for a postgraduate diploma in European studies in the University of Padua.
During her UCD days, she had spent time in Italy working with children on summer camps: “the best way to learn a language”, she says.
Having completed her studies in Padua in the 1990s, she returned to Venice with other plans as well as picking up a further degree in Fundraising and Non-profit Management from the University of Bologna.
“I worked in film production and with theatre companies and as a translator, so I was having a great time in my 20s. It was the first time I was away from home and exciting to be somewhere new.”
In 2001 she started work as a programme assistant to professors in the Venice International University (VIU) and now manages its academic projects providing learning and teaching opportunities for students and scholars from VIU’s associated universities all around the world.
“It was founded in 1995, so as it grew, so did I,” she says.
We are fortunate in having a nice house and garden, but it is harder to find such places now
She works a 40-hour week, “and where I work is on an island [San Servolo, formerly a monastery], so I am crossing the water every day as my office is on a lagoon and you have that wonderful view back to the city”, she says.
Her job at the university, which is now associated with 20 universities globally, brings her into contact with people from all over the world, “so it’s a real mix, with wonderful interdisciplinary and intercultural opportunities”, she says. “Working in an international educational environment is very rewarding. I meet many interesting people and travel regularly too.”
She is married to Sebastiano, a Venetian she met through friends and whom she credits for her decision to stay in Venice. The couple have three children, Conall (17), Clodagh (14) and Oisín (11), who are bilingual.
“My husband has a small family business founded by his parents and his uncle making glass chandeliers in Murano. We have now set up a small business selling chandeliers or lighting directly to customers. He designs and assembles, and we sell them on illuminamurano.com”.
“I felt very connected to the city early on. It has intangible qualities and a lot of people feel really at home here, feel really drawn in, that it is their city.
“It’s a city on water, it’s a pedestrian city, it’s very engaging as you meet people from all walks of life all the time – it could be your neighbour, your butcher, the bar owner. I made a lot of local Venetian friends early on.”
One of the benefits of living in Venice “is the extraordinary quality of light and it really feeds the soul to have all that beauty around you. It’s like living in a town – there are 50,000 residents – but a very international town with enormous cultural institutions, built heritage, galleries and temporary exhibitions like the Biennale.”
Despite all that, she notes that the cost of living is not as high as Ireland.
[ Venice to limit tourist groups to 25 people to ‘protect peace of residents’Opens in new window ]
The challenges of living in Venice? “Rising sea levels, flooding and overtourism are real and impactful.
“Floods are not so much a problem since the setting up of mobile dams three years ago at the inlets to the lagoon, so there have been no bad floods since 2019.
“Overtourism means that the centre of the city gets very crowded and the whole Airbnb issue means that it is difficult to find accommodation for students. We are fortunate in having a nice house and garden, but it is harder to find such places now.”
Social life means “you don’t need to have plans; you can go to your local wine bar and sit down for drinks and a chat – especially on Fridays – from around 6.30pm-7.30pm, before dinner. The kids who finish school at 4.30pm can play football in the square, and watching them and having a drink as the sun goes down before going home for dinner is one of the things I love to do.
“At home we like to entertain quite a lot and enjoy having barbecues. We also have a boat – for free time, not for transport – for a day out for a picnic on part of the lagoon. In summer there is the beach, and in winter skiing is only two hours away.”
She laments the lack of green spaces in the city, but they have a second home in the mountains, bought during Covid in 2021, “and we go there for long weekends during the year, skiing in winter and for walks and hikes during the summer”.
She misses friends and family in Ireland and returns once or twice a year, “though it was easier when the children were younger. You inevitably miss out on some milestones and sharing some of your own too.”
As to the publicity surrounding Jeff Bezos’s planned marriage in the city later this month (estimated to cost more than $600 million), she describes it as the commodification of Venice, with others denouncing it as a great big nuisance.
“The tone of the mayor and his delight in handing the city over to him [Bezos] left me disheartened. It’s not the first time that somebody famous has had a big wedding in the city. George and Amal Clooney did in 2014. That was received very well.
“There is also a total lack of housing policy or amenities for residents, so the frustration of people living here is the real lack of vision of politicians as to what the future of the city will be.”
