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Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why

2022-10-23 19:51:58Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

 

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
Venice

 

 

Julia Buckley, CNN

Tourists this year swam in channels protected by UNESCO. They entered the historical places. And they went so far as to break individual sculptures.

As travel restrictions eased this summer and tourists began traveling to Europe again, the news about visitors behaving badly in Italy just kept coming.

In June, two American tourists caused $25,000 worth of damage to the Spanish Steps in Rome when they pushed and then threw their scooters down them.

In May, a Saudi visitor threw his rented Maserati down the stairs, breaking two of the stairs.

Meanwhile in Venice, tourists routinely swam in the UNESCO-protected canals. In August, two Australians cruised the Grand Canal, while in May, the Americans stripped down for a dip near the 14th-century Arsenale monument.

 

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
Tourists swimming in Venice and pretending they didn't know it wasn't allowed

 

Is that all?

No! Also in August, an Australian decided to ride his motorbike around the ancient Roman site of Pompeii, while in October, an American smashed two precious sculptures in the Vatican Museum, apparently after being told he couldn't see the Pope. Two months ago, an American couple was caught carving their initials into the Arch of Augustus, a 2,000-year-old monument near the Colosseum.

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
In May, a Saudi visitor drove his rented Maserati down the Spanish Steps, breaking two of the steps.

But is this worse than usual, or have we just forgotten how badly people behave when they're on holiday?

The number of international visitors from January to July 2022 increased by 57%, according to ENIT, Italy's tourism board.

Eike Schmidt, director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy's most visited museum in 2021, says tourists behaving badly is nothing new.

"I don't think it's worse this year, I think we left it here in 2019 and now that the visitors have returned, this phenomenon has also returned," he says.

The Uffizi is so well policed ​​that incidents rarely happen inside, Schmidt says, but outside is a different story. The gallery has a pedestrian walkway, with benches carved from the local pietra serena stone that are for tired tourists or those who want to consume something.

Only they don't sit down to rest. Unaware of the fact that the benches were hand-carved in the 16th century, they sit and eat, smearing the sauces on the stone, which promptly stains. Visitors also leave graffiti on the outer walls of the gallery.

 

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
In May, an Italian tourist defaced the Redemptorist Church with graffiti

 

In 2018, Schmidt says, staff cleaned up all the signs people left every morning, and that kind of policy paid off.

People don't tend to write on a clean surface but if a person has made a small drawing or written a bad word it is much easier for others to write because the "guilt" is lower. Now, people very rarely write anything on the building. But what has returned after the pandemic is the problem of paninis and wine and Coca-Cola and all kinds of fatty and sugary things. People buy them from the kiosk and look around for a place to sit and the first thing they find is monuments.

Last year, Schmidt called for fast food businesses to be taxed more than places that have tables and toilets for customers, but now he says nothing has happened as none of the politicians want to enter the debate.

Things are less calm in Venice, where municipal police have dealt with 43 incidents of tourists swimming in canals so far this year, according to chief commissioner Gianfranco Zarantonello. This is almost double the total for the whole of 2021, in which 24 tourists were caught. And, surprisingly, it's worse than the 37 cases in 2019.

There have also been 46 cases of tourists vandalizing Venice's monuments so far this year.

"They are behaving as they have always behaved, only this year the numbers are back to what they were before the pandemic and this corresponds to an increase in shameful behavior," he says.

"Sometimes Venice is not seen as a city. Tourists behave as if it is a beach".

Zarantonello says the extreme behavior is not new.

"A few years ago a Russian tourist stole a boat," he says.

As well as swimming in the canal, so far this year Zarantonello and his colleagues have dealt with a Czech tourist sunbathing topless at a war memorial, two Australians skipping rope in the Grand Canal and an Italian from another region damaging a from the main churches of the city with inscriptions.

 

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
In June, two Americans threw their scooters onto the Spanish Steps, damaging the monument

 

 

While Zarantonello doesn't think it's been made worse by the pandemic, Schmidt says it's their first trip in two years, they're young in a foreign country and can do anything they can't do at home.

"A by-product of the large number of visitors"

Bad tourist behavior is by no means a new phenomenon, of course. British, Australian and American tourists have long been known for their ugly behavior in Southeast Asia, for example.

But Tom Jenkins, CEO of the European Tourism Association (ETOA), says there is a very specific wave of incidents in Italy and this is due to its unique sensitive structure.

"Italy is special in the wealth of tourist characteristics that the country has. Venice and Rome, he adds, are living cities in which people coexist with cultural treasures.

Nowhere in France (the most visited country in the world) are there so many monuments that are, above all, subtle.

"Because the environment is so fragile, any damage is likely to affect a world heritage site," he says.

"I think what we're seeing is a byproduct of the large number of visitors," he says.

"A place without rules"

However, it is not all because of Italy's fragility, say Italian experts. We have not had similar stories from France, Spain or other popular European destinations this year. Instead, they say, the way foreigners think about Italy is driving their bad behavior.

For historian Nicola Bassano, films such as La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini's 1960 classic in which Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg jump into the Trevi Fountain to kiss, have created a false idea of ​​Italy abroad.

"Italy is seen and judged by foreign tourists and especially Americans through stereotypes that are rooted in movies, especially 'La Dolce Vita' and 'Roman Holiday', and through the image that foreigners have created of us through Italian immigrants," he says. .

"Italy is seen as a country without rules and laws, where everything is art and therefore nothing is art".

Why is it that bad behavior appears especially among vacationers? For psychologist Audrey Tang this is because tourists have a sense of anonymity.

"They are not known and this gives you protection."

 

Tourists in Italy are behaving badly this year: Here's why
Tourists want to imitate movies like 'La Dolce Vita.'

 

Ignorance as an excuse?

Sometimes, tourists say they didn't know what they were doing wasn't allowed, and sometimes that's true. When it comes to swimming or surfing in Venice, Zarantonello says, "these are activities that are allowed in their countries, but are prohibited in Italy."

Tang says sometimes people don't check the rules of a destination before they travel.

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