ROME: There is a struggle under
way, in plain view, for the soul of Rome's historic center: In one corner sit the forces of
restraint, etiquette and cultural preservation; in the other sit those with the
unswerving desire for yet another round of drinks.
A leisurely
midnight stroll on almost any summer night through Campo dei
Fiori, Piazza Navona or the
medieval neighborhood of Trastevere puts the issue in
clear relief. It is "ladies night" at Sloppy Sam's, a popular pub on Campo dei
Fiori just in front of the statue of the philosopher
Giordano Bruno. Bruno was condemned to death in 1600 by the Roman Catholic
Church for heresy. Shirtless male bartenders this night are serving up round
after round of half-priced shots.
Around the
corner, a stone's throw from where
Julius Caesar met his treacherous end, the Zeta Lounge is offering two hours of
"open bar" - all you can drink for one low price. Later, at around 3
a.m., an American tourist is barking through a megaphone pleading with a woman
he is with to pull up her skirt and expose herself. This elicits guffaws from
his group of friends, and laughs from the woman herself.
The place is
quite literally soaked in booze and a growing number of Rome's
residents are fed up with what they see.
"It is
unbelievable," said Flaminia Borghese, president
of a homeowner's group in the
historic center that is demanding greater noise control and beefed up police
patrols. "There is a total lack of control."
Borghese seems
uniquely suited to lead a charge for decorum - she is a descendant of the House
of Borghese, a family of noble and papal background. She faults the city for
issuing far too many liquor permits for new restaurants and bars and the police
for failing to enforce various noise-control ordinances.
"The
foreigners come here because they know that they can do whatever they
want," she said. "Nobody says anything."
As a city, Rome remains a very safe
destination for visitors. The rowdiness of its night life is on par with, and
often does not match, that of other major capitals. But the uniqueness of Rome's historic center and the fact that this activity
is a relatively new phenomenon has prompted more and more concern.
"There's been a change in the style of drinking,"
said Dermot O'Connell, who runs
"The Almost Corner Bookstore" on Via del Moro, a main thoroughfare in
Trastevere and a popular nocturnal destination because
of its many bars. "It is now socially acceptable to walk around with an
open bottle of beer and that was not the case five years ago."
O'Connell was a resident of Trastevere
until a year ago. He could not take the noise anymore and left; nor can many of
those who remain, it seems. Last week, many residents staged a protest by
hanging white sheets out their windows and off their balconies and pinning up
posters calling on Mayor Walter Veltroni to do
something.
The city says it
has enacted various measures, like limiting traffic into the historic center,
putting up surveillance cameras, putting more police officers on the streets
and passing a law that requires all glass bottles and glasses to be replaced
with plastic cups after a certain hour.
On its face, the
issue would seem to be a case of too much of a good thing - tourism in Rome is booming and has
been growing steadily for five years. In the month of May, two million people
visited Rome
and the city is predicting that more than 20 million tourists will have passed
through in 2007. But there are other transformative forces at work as well -
some social, some economic - that shine a light on the state of modern tourism.
"Why would
you come to Rome
to drink beer when you can do that anywhere else in the world? The value of Rome is its urban
tissue," said Giuseppe Strappa, an architect and
professor who has written extensively on the changing face of the city's historic center.
Strappa said the issue started to
heat up more than a decade ago, when the city decided to transform the historic
center, which he called the "best preserved" in the world, into an
entertainment destination. That led many ancient palazzos to be gutted and
turned into restaurants and bars. "If it continues like this for 10 years
we will no longer have a historic center," he said.
Chris Felts, who
owns and runs a tourist agency that focuses on backpackers and offers night
tours and pub crawls, said: "I don't
think it is any more out of control than in any other European city. It just sticks
out more in Rome
because the Italians don't have that
sense of night life that the tourists do. It is a juxtaposition of the
traditionally calm Italian night life and what tourists and those few Italians
want to do."
There seem to be
plenty of reasons for the phenomenon, ample blame to go around: Low cost
airlines have put the city within reach of more tourists; the social etiquette
of young Italians has changed; the city has pandered to the youth movement.
Perhaps, too, the expectation of Rome's residents that their city center be a quiet,
well-bred place is out of date.
Others see it
more simply. "The piazzas are public places," Marco DeSantis, 24, said while stealing sips from a huge can of
Italian beer one night. "They are for everyone."