Pink Floyd

Exactly 37 years ago, on 15 July 1989, Pink Floyd pulled off a feat that had, until that moment, seemed unthinkable: turning the Bacino di San Marco into a gigantic open-air theatre, with a floating stage in front of the most fragile and spectacular city in the world. What was meant to be the high point of the Festa del Redentore turned into one of the most discussed and memorable musical events ever staged in Italy, one capable of dividing public opinion while also carving out a permanent place in rock history.
37 years on, that concert could be heading back to cinemas. On the band's official YouTube channel, a mysterious trailer titled “Pink Floyd: Live In Venice” appeared some time ago. No official announcement has come yet, but many fans suspect that, following the success of the cinematic restoration of “Pink Floyd At Pompeii – MCMLXXII”, the historic Venice show could also become the subject of a new film production.

The Venice gamble

The idea for a concert in Venice was born in the middle of the “A Momentary Lapse Of Reason” tour, the first Pink Floyd album made without Roger Waters, who had left the band after the release of “The Final Cut”. The survivors – David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright – had climbed back to the top of world rock, and were looking for an event capable of surpassing any traditional concert. The choice fell on Venice, for the occasion of the Festa del Redentore. The initiative was backed by Rai, which invested around one billion lire in an event destined for worldwide broadcast, and was also meant to serve as a major international showcase for the city, then in the running to host Expo 2000.
The idea of the floating stage was no accident: it revived the old Venetian tradition of orchestras performing on boats in the lagoon during the Redentore festival. To host the band, a 24-metre platform was built and set on a barge measuring 90 by 30 metres, anchored in front of Piazza San Marco.

The show for two hundred thousand

The concert was free and drew around 200,000 people, spread across the banks, the squares, and the boats and vessels that crowded the Bacino di San Marco. Watching from home, meanwhile, were roughly 100 million television viewers, thanks to the live Rai broadcast aired in numerous countries.
The organisation, however, proved inadequate to handle a crowd of that size. To protect the mosaics of St Mark's Basilica, a 60-decibel limit was imposed, a choice that inevitably compromised the sound quality and drew protests from part of the audience.
The controversy erupted mainly after the show. Venice woke up buried in rubbish: around three hundred tonnes of waste and five hundred cubic metres of abandoned cans and bottles, along with several incidents of vandalism, fuelled a fierce political and institutional debate. Even today, the concert is remembered as much for its extraordinary artistic scope as for the organisational problems that followed.

The show: 90 minutes of lights, quadraphonic sound and greatest hits

Musically speaking, the concert condensed into roughly ninety minutes everything that had made Pink Floyd one of the greatest live acts on the planet. The English band, backed by the touring musicians who accompanied them – Jon Carin, Guy Pratt, Tim Renwick, Scott Page, Gary Wallis, Rachel Fury, Durga McBroom and Lorelei McBroom – built a show dominated by lighting effects, lasers, stage effects and the band's trademark quadraphonic sound system, a technology they had helped develop back in the Seventies.
To fit television timing, the setlist was trimmed compared to the other dates of the tour, and some songs, such as “Sorrow” and “Money”, were performed in shortened versions. Even so, the set delivered many of the most celebrated moments in the band's career: from the opening entrusted to “Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I)” through to the grand finale with “Comfortably Numb” and “Run Like Hell”, taking in “Learning To Fly”, “Time”, “Wish You Were Here” and “Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)“ along the way.
It was inevitably a very different show from the suspended atmosphere of Pompeii: here, Pink Floyd weren't playing in the silence of an empty amphitheatre, but in front of a city transformed into an immense floating audience.
Below is the full video of the Pink Floyd concert in Venice.

The concert setlist

Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Part I)
Learning To Fly
Yet Another Movie
Round And Around
Sorrow
The Dogs Of War
On The Turning Away
Time
The Great Gig In The Sky
Wish You Were Here
Money
Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)
Comfortably Numb
Run Like Hell

After Pompeii, is Venice heading to the big screen too?

The footage of the Pink Floyd concert in Venice is nothing new. Back in 1989, Dutch television produced a special directed by Wayne Isham and Egbert van Hees, which was later also broadcast in the UK. Furthermore, in 2019, the live show was included in the “Pink Floyd: The Later Years” DVD and Blu-ray box set. Today's newly released trailer, however, suggests something different: a new cinematic edition, likely restored, that would bring one of the most spectacular events of Pink Floyd's later years back to the big screen.
For now, the band is keeping tight-lipped and has released no further details. But after bringing the legend of Pompeii back to cinemas, Venice too may soon get the recognition many fans have been waiting decades for: that of a legendary concert finally told as a proper film.

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15/07/2026