Tourists face €250 fines for sitting on Spanish Steps in
Rome
Police patrol 18th-century marble steps, blowing whistles at
visitors sitting down
Angela Giuffrida in Rome
Wed 7 Aug 2019 14.50 BST Last modified on Wed 7 Aug 2019
15.56 BST
Visitors sit on the Spanish Steps, Rome
The Spanish Steps
have always been a favourite place for tourists to sit, but Rome wants the
practice to stop. Photograph: Alamy
The authorities in Rome have been accused of applying
“fascist-style” measures after police began shooing resting tourists away from
the staircase of the famous Spanish Steps.
Police began patrolling the 18th-century marble steps on
Tuesday, blowing whistles at those sitting down. The monument, a Unesco world
heritage site, has long been the ideal resting spot for tired visitors and
holds a special allure at sunset.
But people could be fined €250 simply for sitting down on
one of the 136 steps that lead up to the Trinità dei Monti church, and up to
€400 for dirtying or damaging the steps in their wake.
The measure is among a raft of rules reinforced by the
authorities in early June, including a ban on “messy eating” by monuments,
wandering around bare-chested, jumping into fountains, and dragging wheeled
suitcases and pushchairs down historic staircases.
“Protecting a monument is fine, and obviously you shouldn’t
eat on the steps, but the ban on sitting down is really excessive,” Vittorio
Sgarbi, a controversial art critic and former deputy minister of culture, told
AdnKronos news agency. “It seems to
me to be a fascist-style provision that the municipality will be forced to
review.”
“We agree that people shouldn’t ‘camp out’ and eat on the
steps of monuments, as rubbish gets left behind,” said Tommaso Tanzilli, a
director at the Rome unit of Federalberghi, the Italian hotels association.
“But criminalising people for sitting down, especially if they are elderly, is
a little exaggerated.”
Claudio Pica, president of Fiepet-Confesercenti, in Rome,
said the rule was absurd and would drive tourists away.
The monument, designed by the architect Francesco de Sanctis
between 1723 and 1726, underwent a €1.5m restoration in 2016, funded by the
luxury jeweller Bulgari.
Similar measures are in place in Venice, with stewards
patrolling the steps of the porticos that surround St Mark’s Square and other
monuments throughout the summer. The exercise of moving people away is often
futile, as unwitting visitors soon replace them. But authorities there do take
tough action against those who flout the “decorum” rules: in July, two German
tourists were fined €950 and asked to leave the city after being caught
preparing themselves coffee on a camping stove on the steps of the Rialto
Bridge.
And the rich and famous are not excluded from Italy’s rules.
The newlywed German model Heidi Klum and her husband are reportedly facing a
€6,000 fine for swimming in Capri’s Blue Grotto. The couple, who married on the
island on Saturday, allegedly dived into the turquoise waters of the cavern
from a yacht shortly before sunset on Monday. People can visit the grotto by
boat, but swimming is strictly forbidden.
Ten ways to get in trouble in Italy
As Rome and other Italian cities continue their crackdown on
“uncouth” behaviour, you might get in trouble if you do any of the following:
“Messy eating” or “camping out” on piazzas or the steps of
monuments.
Singing, while drunk, on public transport.
Wrapping your mouth around the nozzle of a drinking fountain.
Walking around bare-chested.
Dragging wheeled suitcases and buggies down historic
staircases.
Jumping into
fountains.
Dipping your toes
into a canal in Venice.
Feeding pigeons in Venice.
Building sandcastles in Eraclea, a beach town near Venice.
Wearing noisy shoes in Capri (wooden clogs have been banned
since 1960).
Don’t look now … it’s the sandwich police, saving Venice
from its tourists
This article is more
than 1 year old
In a bid to stop visitors tarnishing the city’s image,
stewards are monitoring so-called uncouth behaviour. But is it a step too far?
Angela Giuffrida
Sat 14 Jul 2018 13.35 BST Last modified on Sat 14 Jul 2018
16.55 BST
Police keep a watchful eye in St Mark’s Square.
Police keep a
watchful eye in St Mark’s Square. Photograph: Chris Warde-Jones/The Observer
A couple of resting tourists look baffled as they are shooed
away from the steps of the portico that surrounds St Mark’s Square in Venice.
They are the first victims of the so-called “angels of decorum”, a group of
stewards who started monitoring the canal city’s most congested areas on Friday
morning for signs of uncouth behaviour. It appears to be a somewhat futile
task: in a city that brings in about 60,000 tourists a day, unwitting
counterparts soon replace them.
Still, as lunchtime nears, the couple fare better than those
who settle on the steps and commit a far worse infraction. “Sitting down is
forbidden but sitting down and eating is doubly forbidden,” Issa Diop, who is
on his fourth summer season as a steward, tells the Observer.
The creation of the team of 15 is part of an overall plan by
the Venice authorities to restore dignity to a city whose reputation has been
tarnished by misbehaving tourists. Visitors have often been photographed
bathing or peeing in a canal, or leaping drunkenly from the Rialto bridge into
the pungent waters below.
Dressed in white vests with #Enjoy Respect Venezia
emblazoned on the back, the stewards are on the lookout for anybody committing
such transgressions – along with those parading around bare-chested or in
bathing suits, feeding pigeons, dropping litter or huddling on bridges in
groups. They must also ensure that tourists keep to the right when walking
along the city’s narrow alleyways so as not to block the flow.
The rules have long been in place and are listed on
signposts dotted around the square. In the English version they come under the
word “Forbid” (sic). But few people have taken note.
“It’s about respecting the city,” said Paola Mar, Venice’s
tourism chief. “If you go to Singapore and throw a cigarette butt on the floor,
you’d soon be in handcuffs. We don’t want to be like that but people do need to
respect the rules.”
It isn’t all about ticking off tourists, though. The
stewards, who are required to speak English, also have a duty to tell visitors
where they can eat their picnics while encouraging them to try the local
cuisine. They are seen as gentle assistants to the local police, who have the
authority to bar people from the city and hit them with fines of up to €300 for
flouting one of the more serious rules reinforced by authorities last week.
These include bans against bathing or simply dipping your
feet in the canals; the latter misdemeanour is said to have been a favourite
pastime of artists and writers, including the American author Henry James, who
frequented Venice when it was regarded as La Serenissima, the most serene.
Authorities believe that outwardly drunken behaviour has
spoiled the serenity of today’s Venice – so much so it will no longer be
tolerated. Hen and stag parties have been banned while the kind of raucous
behaviour that might come with, say, celebrating a graduation, will also be
frowned upon.
“It’s not about criminalising one particular group – we
don’t want to see locals drunk either. The rules against rudeness apply to
all,” said Mar.
But in an emotionally-charged city where residents often jar
against their leaders, the latest actions are seen as a joke. “There are far
bigger problems to deal with than criminalising tourists for sitting down,
cooling their feet in the water or eating a sandwich,” said Marco Gasparinetti,
who leads the city’s Gruppo Aprile 25 activists.
Residents’ associations such as his have long complained
about the authorities’ inability to manage a tourism industry which they argue
has eroded their quality of life as well as damaging the environment and, they
suggest, driving residents away: Venice’s population has fallen from about
175,000 in the post-second world war years to 54,000 today. The city loses some
1,000 inhabitants a year.
They also lament the behemoth cruise ships that chug through
the Grand Canal, emitting fumes and disgorging thousands of people into the
crowded streets – on some days as many as 44,000. It was announced in November
last year that the largest vessels would be diverted from the city centre, but
the plan is yet to be officially approved by the national government.
Gates were installed at the two entry points to the lagoon
over the 1 May national holiday weekend in an attempt to ease the throng
heading towards St Mark’s Square and the Rialto bridge. They will be used again
from now until the end of August.
If numbers get too high, the gates are closed and access is
allowed only to those with hotel bookings or holding a Venezia Unica pass, a
card that is mainly used by residents but can be bought for €14 by anyone who
uses a water bus.
“Again, it’s just a marketing tool to show they are doing
something,” added Gasparinetti. “It doesn’t resolve anything.”
Authorities are also trying to encourage people to visit
other, lesser-known areas of the Venetian lagoon or one of its other islands,
such as Murano and Burano.
But Gasparinetti is not impressed, likening this particular
strategy to spreading tomato sauce. “By spreading the problem everywhere there
is nowhere to find peace,” he said. “We don’t see how this will improve our quality
of life.”
He also pointed to the hotels under construction in the
nearby urban sprawl of Mestre, with the idea being to encourage people to visit
nearby places, such as the beach of Jesolo.
“They don’t come
here for Jesolo, they come for Venice,” he added. “So even if they stay
in Mestre, they can reach Venice in 10 minutes.”
The divergent opinions between residents and the tourism
authority can perhaps be best summed up in their comparisons of the city to
Disneyland – the first seeing the Florida theme park as a nightmare, and the
latter as a dream.
“Maybe these people don’t know Disneyland, but I do, having
been there 13 or 14 times for work,” said Mar. “Disneyland is perfect and clean
and works extremely well.”
In a city that survives on tourism, her priority, she added,
is to manage the flow while developing a plan that will encourage people to
stay longer and experience Venice beyond the main sites. Of complaints from
residents, she says: “Italy is a funny place… if you don’t do anything then
it’s not good, but if you try and do something, it’s still not good.” .
Back at St Mark’s Square, among those being reprimanded by
the stewards is a Belgian family sitting on the portico steps and eating
sandwiches from a nearby shop. With no benches on the square, their only other
option would have been to go to one of the local cafés where a cappuccino can
cost up to €12.
“It’s ridiculous,” says Rebecca Calewaert, travelling in
Italy with her husband and two children. “Why sell sandwiches to take away if
we can’t eat them here? We’re adults and would have thrown away our rubbish.
Surely there are more important things to focus on, such as pickpockets.”
Meanwhile Venice resident Barbara Miccoli, fully aware of
the patrolling vigilantes, snaps a photo of her son blatantly breaking two of
the rules: eating a sandwich and simultaneously feeding a pigeon.
“Yes, the city does need to be respected,” she says. “But
these rules are a little exaggerated.”
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