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elleng

(136,071 posts)
Thu Jun 22, 2017, 08:56 PM Jun 2017

No Swimming! Rome Braces for Summer of Tourists at Its Fountains.

ROME — On a sweltering Monday afternoon, a beautiful day for a swim, Mario Messina noticed some holidaymakers teetering dangerously close to the turquoise waters and sounded five short blasts of his whistle.

“Come down!” Mr. Messina said, with an elegant flip of the hand to a woman leaning over the ledge to test the water temperature. “Come down!”

Despite his Ray-Bans, virtuosity with a whistle and sunny Sicilian disposition, Mr. Messina is not a seaside lifeguard but a Roman police officer in a pith helmet. He is entrusted to protect the Trevi Fountain, one of the world’s most cherished and visited monuments, from the scourge of parched, overheated and advancing tourist armies. And now he has reinforcements.

Because summer is here. . .

The “New Barbarians” as some papers have taken to calling the tourists, are not limited to Rome.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/world/europe/no-swimming-rome-braces-for-summer-of-tourists-at-its-fountains.html?

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