Rome’s crackdown on homeless: No sleeping or snacking near museums, attractions

Susan Spano’s Postcards From Rome

On my way to Italian class the other morning, I saw a young couple wrapped together on a bench in a park along Via dei Fori Imperiali. They’d obviously been there all night, spooning in the shadow of the Colosseum — an interlude, I suspect, they will remember all their lives.

But that was before Rome instituted a crackdown on indecorous behavior around its major monuments. As of July 10, people visiting places like the Roman Forum and Spanish Steps can get fined up to $80 if they misbehave – which includes snacking, littering, drinking, sleeping and making too much noise.

It’s part of an effort to sanitize tourist Rome, visited by 7.6 million people in the first five months of this year, which started with the closure of the Forum to passersby last spring. Now people must buy tickets to walk through the center of Imperial Rome for about $16.50, including the Colosseum.

The main target of the legislation will probably be Rome’s homeless people, who settle for the night underneath ancient arches and on the doorsteps of Renaissance palazzos around the city. I see them all the time and think of how they are tolerated in Santa Monica, regardless of the impression they make on tourists. It’s a difficult problem no one has right.

— Susan Spano, Times Staff writer

[Photo: Susan Spano / Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 11:01 am by Susan Spano and is filed under Europe, Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.