Venice: Would you like crass commercialism with your gnocchi?

"It is neither ugly nor beautiful but simply necessary," Massimo Cacciari, the mayor of Venice, said in a statement. "We are forced to move in this way because we have limited resources. We need to take care of the buildings and monuments that make up the artistic beauty of Venice, but to do so we need a hand, and the city's cultural authorities are looking for sponsors."

It's unclear how the city is going about finding advertisers, or how much the billboards will cost, but there appears to be interest. "The screens in St. Mark's will be a great chance for high-end brands to reach a largely upscale audience," said Mike Segrue, global chief client officer at Kinetic Worldwide, an out-of-home company owned by WPP Group. "The careful vetting of copy and creative should allow Venice city council to retain some control and, of course, in the end important renovations will be completed. It is probably a relatively harmless necessary evil."