Mayors are desperate to stop uncivilized and rude tourists. This is how they try to stop them. But bans aren't enough.

Let's not be snobs about urban life, and let's not be harsh on tourists who, as such, bring various benefits to our cities in economic terms and also in terms of job opportunities and development. But let's say that the Sitting on the Spanish Steps in Rome's Piazza di Spagna is prohibited., as burdensome as it is, should be welcomed as a desperate form of liberation from uncivilized and even barbaric tourists, who, spending even a few euros, waste and destroy our heritage. It's no coincidence that similar measures, all inspired by the same desperation on the part of mayors and local governments, have been taken in other major Italian cities, traditionally inundated by the long wave of visitors.

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UNCIVILIZED TOURISTS 

In Florence's historic center, you can't stop to eat or camp on the steps of churches and monuments, on sidewalks, or in the doorways of open shops. In Venice, you can't ride a gondola bare-chested or in a bathing suit. In Milan, you can't walk around the Navigli and Porta Ticinese areas with plastic and glass bottles, or beer and soft drink cans. It's clear that we can't militarize cities, or any other corner of Italy's beauty. for example, with eight Roman police officers committed to preventing people from sitting on 135 steps, but we shouldn't raise our hands in surrender either. And perhaps after and before these clear and strong signals of reaction from administrators, we will need to work, in a spirit of sharing, with collaboration between citizens and guests, to foster an urban style, a sort of decorum, and, if you will, a decalogue (in Florence they've put it online), in the lives of tourists. The city belongs and remains everyone's, a common good par excellence. And as such, it must be experienced and respected. Without reducing it to a shrine, which is impossible, but also without transforming it into a place of chaos, anarchy, and urban barbarism.

There is no Italian city, from North to South, that is immune from this new tribe of barbarians: the tourists uncivilizedThey arrive, rude, arrogant, and rude, and they feel like they own the beautiful places in our country. They do and undo what they want. With enormous waste: for cleaning and tidying up after their antics, for decorum and civility that end up in the garbage bin dragged by these vandals. Look at some of the photos included with the article: there would not even be any need to comment. volunteers of "Let's Clean Turin"(well done and congratulations!), they work every day to clean the streets of the city center of litter, empty bottles and even worse, cigarette butts abandoned everywhere. But the decorum of Turin, as reported Corriere della Sera, is also put to the test by the "rude" and borderline decency behavior of tourists who turn the archaeological park into a picnic area and those who bathe in Piazza Castello. Not to mention the tourists who choose to visit the city bare-chested: the "dress code" chosen, for example, by this group of young men walking through the streets of the center, as you can see in the photo published by Corriere della Sera.

RUDE TOURISTS

The tourist, especially if a foreigner, is like the guest: sacred. But sacred is not synonymous with uncivilized or unpunished.. In fact, if anything, the opposite is true: our warm and effective welcome, based on civil behavior and natural, uncontrived kindness, should be matched by similar behavior on the part of our (paying) guests.

With this premise, I do not feel like condemning the mayor Dario Nardella, with whom, some time ago, we openly argued about the outrage of McDonald's in Florence, for the attempt to prove to stop the vandals, made up as tourists, in the Tuscan capital, with water blasts fired onto church squares, where crowds often camp out without any basic rules of good manners.  

TO KNOW MORE: In Palinuro, a coffee shop in exchange for waste. Strictly glass, to combat uncivilized tourism.

TOURIST UNCIVILITY 

Florence thrives on tourism, but is besieged, and on some days and at some times even suffocated, by tourists. And so too Venice, Rome, and, in different proportions, Naples, Palermo, Milan, Turin, BolognaThere is no city in Italy, especially in this period of very favorable economic conditions, that is not literally "occupied" by tourists, not to mention the villages, of the small towns and places that are most representative of our country's identity. Places that we often waste because we are unable to truly protect or enhance them effectivelyPlaces, however, that we cannot afford to doubly waste because of the incivility of a minority of tourists who become their ruinous scavengers.

ETIQUETTE FOR TOURISTS

The pictures speak for themselves and need no comment. Big, tipsy guys and obese women diving into the pool. Trevi Fountain. Entire families and groups of travellers left to their own devices occupying, as if they were soldiers on leave, the Spanish StepsGroups from all over the world cross Venice like barbarians, eating as if they were in a company trattoria, outdoors, on the bridges, Piazza San Marco, on churchyards, on stairways. I could go on and on with this list of atrocities, for which it's right that a mayor, but also we as citizens, should begin to react. Perhaps with a modicum of support from the central government, which, as usual when it comes to problems, always leaves local administrators alone.

HOW TO STOP TOURIST INCIVILITY 

We must stop these uncivilized tourists, without violence, without arrogance, without threats: but with firmness. On the other hand, I ask all the readers who travel or have traveled: Have you ever dreamed of camping in front of the Louvre a Paris? Or to Central Park a New YorkNever. And you did well, not only out of politeness and civility, but also for one small detail: If a tourist is uncivilized, in any Western country or elsewhere, they'll at least be reprimanded, fined, and arrested. But they could also end up on trial.Why then, in Bella Italia, can tourists—I repeat, we need them, and we must consider them sacred—do as they please, feeling above the law, the residents, and good manners?

THE TOURISM WE MUST NOT WASTE:

• Tourism, Italy's biggest waste. Visitor attendance and spending are decreasing.
• Cycling holidays: a short guide to cycle tourism. From the crew to the route.
• Tourism Waste: Foreigners Afraid of Italy
• Traveling on foot in Italy and Europe: the most evocative itineraries
• The best walks in Italy, 6 kilometers of wonders. Here are the most beautiful (photos)