Free Essays, Term Papers, Research Papers at Anti Essays

Tourists beware: if it's fun, Italy has a law against it

Head for the beach or a park bench without knowing the rules, writes Peter Popham, and you could come home with a hefty fine

Sunday, 17 August 2008

* Print Print
* Email Email

Search Search Go
Independent.co.uk Web
Bookmark & Share

* Digg It
* del.icio.us
* Facebook
* Reddit

What are these?
Change font size: A | A | A

In addition to the usual perils of sunburn, jellyfish attacks and bottom-pinching, holidaymakers in Italy face a new range of menaces this summer, the result of the Berlusconi government's frontal assault on what it calls the "security emergency".

The nation's mayors have been given carte blanche to write laws to address their own particular security hang-ups. The result is a blizzard of new rules and regulations that threatens to turn the bel paese into the biggest nanny state of them all.

Unwary foreigners risk getting hefty fines for doing things that are perfectly legal everywhere in the world except the particular town or city where they find themselves.

In Genoa, for example, it is now against the law to walk around with a bottle of wine or can of beer in your hand. In Rome that is okay, but if you stretch out under a pine tree or on the Spanish Steps to drink it, or merely to eat a sandwich, your "indecorous" behaviour may be penalised. Likewise if your al fresco snack is followed by a nap.

Stiff regulations are aimed at beach-goers: on one beach in Olbia, Sardinia, smokers risk a €360 (£280) fine, while nationwide, the minister of welfare has imposed a ban on massages offered by immigrants, warning of the possible dangerous effects of "aesthetic or therapeutic services" offered by those "not in possession of adequate training or competence".