Romans revolt as tourists turn their noses up at city’s
decay
Rubbish, potholes and metro closures contribute to anger
among visitors and citizens alike
Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Fri 26 Apr 2019 12.59 BST Last modified on Sat 27 Apr 2019
10.33 BST
‘Rome says enough’: People protest at the Piazza del Campidoglio
about the state of Rome. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images
As the day draws to a close in Rome, tourists are enjoying a
nightcap at a bar on Piazza della Rotonda. In front of them stands the majestic
Pantheon, the imposing domed temple built by Emperor Hadrian.
To their right, however, is a scene less befitting the
piazza, famed for its elegance and history. A photomural of the temple covers
boarding that surrounds a building under renovation and as the night gets later
it is used to prop up a pile of rubbish bags and boxes discarded by nearby
restaurants.
The rubbish will be cleared by the time the tourists have
breakfast, but not before they have taken note. “Rome is beautiful but they
can’t seem to manage the rubbish situation, can they?” remarked a visitor from
Austria.
Residents, including Pope Francis, have long lamented the
Italian capital’s degrado (decay) – the word frequently used to sum up a city
in a perennial state of disrepair, from its rubbish-strewn streets, potholes,
scrappy parks and medieval buildings marred by graffiti to closed metro
stations and buses that either never come or occasionally combust.
But visitors are now starting to rebel, with many begrudging
having to pay the tax for spending a night in the city only to get scant
services in return. The Rome tourist levy – which starts at about €4 a night
for a two- or three-star hotel and rises to €7 for a five-star – is the highest
in Europe.
“Guests are asking why the tourist tax is high in respect to
a city where the services don’t really exist,” Roberto Wirth, the owner and
managing director of Hotel Hassler, a five-star hotel at the top of the Spanish
Steps in the centre of the city, told the Guardian.
“There was a plan [by the local authority] for it to be
increased, but hotel owners objected. There was no justification for it.”
As the tourism season gets under way, the issue enraging
people the most is the prolonged closure of three metro stations in the
historic centre while work is done on malfunctioning escalators. Spagna,
located near the Hassler, and Barberini, were shut down in March, while
Repubblica has been closed since October after 24 people were injured when a
crowded escalator suddenly sped up before collapsing.
The stations are essential for tourists as they navigate
their way to key landmarks, but also for people working in central Rome.
“It does seem unfair
that the tax is so high when things don’t really work and there’s rubbish on
the streets,” said a visitor from Milan outside Spagna station as she tried to
work out how to get from there to the Vatican area. “We didn’t realise the
stations were closed. We understand that the work is necessary, but perhaps
they should have started earlier.”
Tomasso Tanzilli, a director at the Rome unit of
Federalberghi, the Italian hotels association, said the tax would be a minor
problem if the city functioned well.
“We have
well-documented problems with neglect and cleanliness, but in a modern-day
capital city it’s unthinkable to have three main stations in the centre
closed,” he said. “There have been lots of promises but no sign yet of the
stations reopening.”
Rome’s beleaguered mayor, Virginia Raggi, a politician with
the Five Star Movement, the party governing nationally alongside the far-right
League, is often blamed for the city’s woes, although the malaise stems from
long before she was elected in June 2016.
Tanzilli said: “The problems were there before, but it’s
clear that if they’re not resolved they accumulate. Over the past two years or
so we’ve watched things crumble – that is the truth, the issues may originate
from the past but they are more visible now.”
That visibility has prompted calls for Raggi to resign, with
politicians from the opposition Democratic party (PD), which governed Italy
until March 2018, protesting outside Spagna metro station this week.
Andrea Casu, the party’s secretary in Rome, said the PD
allocated €189m to make the metro system safe, but it had not been used by
Raggi’s administration “We are taking our fight against Virginia Raggi’s poor
governance across the city and ask that she resigns.”
Raggi received a further blow this week after a measure that
would have transferred a large portion of the city’s debt to the state was
scaled back due to criticism from Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister and
leader of the League. Salvini, who is capitalising on the problems as he strives
to build support for his party before Rome’s municipal elections in 2021,
considered it unjust that such a poorly managed city should be relieved of its
debt.
But as the politicians squabble, tourism operators fear the
impact on a city that already struggles to attract repeat visitors.
“This is our concern, we want to send out positive signals –
that the metro stations are open and the city is clean,” said Tanzilli.
“Unfortunately we are not able to do that yet, but our wish is to start talking
about the future and not the present problems.”
• This article was amended on 27 April 2019. An earlier
version incorrectly said Rome’s municipal elections would be held next year.
This has been changed to 2021.
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