Venice city council is hushing up the opening of a new high-tech bridge over the lagoon city's Grand Canal after opposition politicians threatened to scupper its inauguration ceremony.
Designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, the bridge was to have been opened on September 18 with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in attendance.
But the council changed its mind on Monday after members of the right-wing National Alliance said they would use the event to ''explain to Napolitano in detail'' how the new bridge was ''a monument to bad administration and a waste of Venice's money''.
National Alliance councillors have long claimed that the cost of the project has spiralled out of control due to planning errors and have pointed out that there is still no disabled access over the bridge.
''To put an end to the exploitation and speculation there will be no inauguration,'' said Venice council's public works chief, Mara Rumiz.
''I for one am not very interested in ceremonies and much more concerned with works coming to fruition effectively,'' she added.
The bridge will now be opened without fanfare, ''maybe on September 18, but it might be September 17 or 19'', Rumiz said.
The council has pledged to install an automatic lift for people with mobility problems in the next few months.
First planned in 1996, the bridge has been dogged by controversy and delays from the start.
The structure was installed two years late last summer amid fears that the canal banks wouldn't be able to hold it up properly.
In February Mayor Massimo Cacciari had to dismiss fears that the bridge might be shaky after a local newspaper quoted project chief Roberto Casarin as saying it had moved ''about a centimetre'' in a load-bearing trial.
Other alterations to the original plan included the decision to add stairs, in order to make the structure more visible to tourists, and to use two kinds of stone instead of one.
An original price tag of four million euros has swelled to what the council says is ''around ten million'', but the National Alliance claims that the final cost could be twice that due to legal disputes with the construction company.
Once opened, the bridge will link Venice's railway station with Piazzale Roma, a car, bus and ferry terminal on the opposite side of the Grand Canal.
The sleek arc of steel accessed by a flight of glass steps spans 94 metres from one bank to the other.
The bridge will be the fourth over the lagoon city's Grand Canal and the city's first new bridge in 70 years.
Former culture undersecretary and art critic Vittorio Sgarbi weighed in against the bridge on Monday, describing it as ''unnecessary'' and saying it hid the Venice skyline from Piazzale Roma.
But Sgarbi had some words of praise for Calatrava's design.
''It looks like a lobster, which isn't a bad thing,'' he said.
The council has yet to announce an official name for the structure, which is known locally as the Calatrava Bridge.
Calatrava's other trademark buildings include the 2004 Athens Olympic stadium, an auditorium and sealife centre in his native Valencia, and the Milwaukee Museum of Fine Arts.
