Page 7 - IAV Digital Magazine #549

iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine
US Tourist Throws Scooter Down Rome’s Spanish Steps, Causing €25,000 Damage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxQiby6kFQk
An American tourist has caused €25,000 (£21,000) worth of damage after hurling her elec- tric scooter down Rome’s Spanish Steps.
The incident was filmed by a passerby in the early hours of
Friday. Police later caught up with the 28-year- old and fined her and a 29-year-old male companion, who had wheeled his e-scooter down the 18th- century marble steps, €400 each.
The pair were also banned from
returning to the famous monu- ment, a Unesco world heritage site that under- went a €1.5m restoration in 2015. The inci- dent came two weeks after a visi- tor from Saudi Arabia drove a Maserati down the flight of steps.
People
were banned from sitting on the Spanish Steps in 2018.
Tourist numbers in the Italian capi- tal have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with intense crowds converging at cul- tural landmarks.
But the recovery of the sector has also seen the return of tourists flouting rules of decorum. In April, two Dutch visitors were fined €1,000 for step- ping into the Trevi fountain, which was a fairly com- mon occurrence before the pan- demic.
A few days before, a 39-year- old Argentinian man was charged with breaking strict no-fly zone rules after crash- ing a drone into the roof of a prominent monu- ment in central Rome.
He had been fly- ing his drone in Piazza Venezia when he lost con- trol of the device and sent it crash- ing into the roof of Palazzo Venezia, a 15th-century building from where the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini deliv- ered some of his
most famous speeches.
Such incidents are not exclusive to Rome: a week earlier two Mexican tourists crashed their drone into the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Venice is also a popular target for badly behaved tourists. Police renewed their crackdown on uncouth visitors to the city last sum- mer, saying the return of tourism had coincided with “signs of urban degrada- tion”.
Among those fined was a French tourist who paddled along the Grand Canal on his stand-up paddle- board, and two German women who sunbathed in bikinis by San Stae church.
iAV - Antelope Valley Digital Magazine