Venetians stage the mock funeral. (AP)

Rome, Nov. 15: Venice may be brimming with Renaissance treasures, churches and palaces, but it has staged a “funeral” to mourn the decline of its most precious resource — people.

Once the centre of a mighty trading empire that dominated the eastern Mediterranean, the Queen of the Adriatic’s population has been dropping for years and has just dipped beneath the psychologically crucial threshold of 60,000.

The calamitous population decline, because of a lack of jobs and the crippling cost of living, has been marked with a mock “funeral”.

A red coffin symbolising the death of “La Serenissima”, as the Venetian republic was known in its independent heyday, was borne down the Grand Canal in a procession of three gondolas. The casket was then lifted onto dry land and deposited outside the town hall, home to Venice’s governing council, in a lament for the once-bustling lagoon city.

It may be gradually sinking, its crumbling canals and piazzas threatened by an increasing number of high tides, but the more pressing concern is whether there will be any Venetians left to defend it from the encroaching Adriatic.

Venetians fear that they are becoming an endangered species and that their home will end up a vast open-air museum thronged with tourist day-trippers by day, but a virtual ghost town by night.

Sky-high rents and exorbitant property prices, fuelled by wealthy Italians and foreigners seeking a slice of Venetian magic, have fuelled a mass exodus of its inhabitants to nearby towns on the Italian mainland.

Among the organisers of the “funeral” was Matteo Secchi, who said the crushing weight of mass tourism was also squeezing the life out of the city. Each year, 20 million visitors descend on Venice. Surging through the narrow alleyways and squares, they are snuffing out the very culture that they have come to enjoy.

“People leave because life is becoming impossible. All the normal shops are turning into stores selling souvenirs like Venetian masks and Murano glass. It’s no good for the locals — you can’t eat glass.”

Venice has been so consumed by tourism over the last few decades that there is very little other economic activity left, so job opportunities for anyone who does not want to work in a hotel, as a gondolier or a tour guide are limited.

“We need to find new kinds of business,” Secchi said. “Can you believe, the local water transport company bought its newest vaporetto from Greece? Venetians built boats for centuries — why can’t we still build them here?”

Venice’s population has been sliding for years, from 174,000 in 1951 to 70,000 in 1996.

Official figures show the city’s permanent population is now 59,992. A quarter of those residents are over 64 and the city’s registry office has warned that Venice could be devoid of full-time, native-born inhabitants by the year 2030.