As the summer months continue and more travellers flock to Italy for vacation, some locals have grown tired of tourists treating their cities like a playground.
In Florence, photos of a female tourist groping a beloved statue and miming a sex act have triggered outrage, with some officials calling for an end to bad behaviour from foreigners.
The photos were shared to Instagram on Tuesday. In one of the two blurry images, a woman is seen standing on the base of a life-sized statue of the Roman god Bacchus as she holds onto the sculpture and pretends to kiss it. In the second, the woman is bent over as if performing a lewd act with the figure.
The statue is a replica of a 16th-century work by Italian sculptor Giambologna and stands on a public street corner near the Ponte Vecchio bridge. The original sculpture is made of bronze and is housed inside the National Museum of Bargello.
The photos of the unidentified tourist sparked fury among Florentines. In the comments on the post, some called for the woman’s arrest and expulsion from the country.
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“This is the result of years of attempts at turning Florence into Disneyland,” one person wrote in Italian.
Another Italian commenter compared the photos to U.S. sculptures and said that if they defaced the Lincoln Memorial statue, “they’d give me the electric chair.”
In a statement to the BBC, Antonella Rinaldi, Florence’s archeology and fine arts superintendent, condemned the tourist’s behaviour.
“Tourists are welcome here but they need to respect our artworks, be they originals or replicas,” she said, adding that the woman likely didn’t know the difference in the first place.
Patrizia Asproni, president of the cultural heritage organization Confcultura, said tourists in Florence make “repeated shows of rudeness and barbarity” during their visits.
Asproni suggested Florence implement a “Singapore model” that would see tourists face “tight checks, sky-high fines and zero tolerance” for mischief like that of the viral photos.
Though Florence has a population of 366,000 residents, the city sees an influx of about 11 million tourists each year. The tourist boom has led to local frustration to do with rising costs, overcrowded public spaces, tourist trap businesses and an influx of Airbnb apartments in the heart of the city.
Florence is not the only European city to grow tired of poor tourist behaviour. This month, a small group of anti-tourism protesters in Barcelona, Spain were filmed as they sprayed travellers with water guns while dining at a restaurant. The protesters chanted slogans like, “Tourists go home,” though Spanish officials have since condemned the protesters and said the instance is not reflective of Spanish hospitality.
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