While tourists may love this lagoon city's pigeons, for Venetians they are a little too dear, costing each resident some 275 euros a year to clean up the mess and damage they cause.
According to a report by the Nomisma research group, ten euros are spent per pigeon to clean up public areas. This becomes 23 euros when the cost of cleaning the monuments and statues in St Mark's Square is added in.
Another 43 million euros is spent each year to compensate for the damage they cause to agriculture on the mainland.
According to the city's department of fine arts and historic monuments, pigeons cause the most damage "to plaster and stucco used on the exterior of buildings and the mortar used in restoration work".
Aside from the damage caused by pigeon excrement, the birds also peck at buildings and flagstone to make small pebbles eaten to help their digestion.
"We are not trying to mount a campaign against the birds, but this scientific study has proven the authentic damage they cause," the office said.
Venice's pigeon population has increased 24% in the last year alone, in part due to last year's mild winter, the department observed.
"Just ask feed vendors in St Mark's Square how many tonnes of grain they've sold this past year," the department said.
In order to reduce the pigeon population, the department suggested cutting back their food supply.
"A lack of food will most certainly have a significant effect on the number of pigeons we have," the department said.
PIGEONS TO BE DRIVEN OUT GRADUALLY. Last February, the city councillor for commerce, Giuseppe Bertolussi, proposed driving pigeons completely out of St Mark's Square, their last refuge in the lagoon city.
Like several other European cities, Venice has already banned people from feeding pigeons in all other parts of town, saying they are a public health menace and a nuisance.
The traders who sell bags of feed in the city's most famous square obtained a reprieve, saying their livelihoods were at stake.
But Bertolussi said it was time to end what he defined as "health emergency".
Heedless of calls to spare the remaining pigeons which tourists love to feed and snap in front of St Mark's, Bertolussi vowed to close down the square's two dozen feed stands.
Later he compromised and said the process would be gradual and "only carried out with the agreement of the people involved".
The councillor is working to find alternative jobs for the feed vendors or offer them handsome settlements to give up their time-honoured trade.
Asked when St Mark's would be pigeon-free, he replied: "I hope it'll happen soon, but it can't be a top-down solution".
The St Mark's pigeons are the last survivors of a sweeping drive, launched in 2000, to rid the city of disease-bearing animals.
This included a campaign to root out birds' nests, while citizens were urged to clean their window sills and gutters regularly.
But, unlike London for instance, authorities have stopped short of bringing in hawks to kill what Venice Mayor Massimo Cacciari has described as 'flying rats'.
