From denial to acknowledging the obvious, the Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, of the M5S party, has ordered a survey of the situation. Why can't she just send out the trucks and get the job done? For months readers of the city paper 'Roma Today' have been sending in photos of overflowing skips alongside pictures of holes in the road and gulls feasting on rats or pigeons.
Unsurprisingly, as the clean up job slowly gets underway emptying the skips has revealed shocking larval life in their depths. Putrefying, decaying mountains of waste cooked at over 30°C have produced the expected. By the time the trucks have cleared one road already the bins are filling up again. Citizens who have stashed their rubbish rather than dump it on the kerbside rush out to get rid of it. The skips'll be overflowing again in no time.
In other countries such as France where such high temperatures are less usual special provisions have been taken to try and assist people through the heatwave and to avoid a repeat of the14,000 or more deaths of the 2003 heatwave. For example, in Paris swimming-pools are being kept open later and bottles of water given out in the larger cities. In Rome, the price of bottled water goes up on the hottest days, especially in the mini-markets that are scattered all over the city.
But to be fair, with this early heatwave, the civil protection unit has been giving out bottles of water to tourists outside the main historic sites. Anyone visiting the Imperial Fori in the summer knows how dusty and shade free the archaeological park is. The Palatine hill is cooler with its umbrella pines.
The Mayor doesn't issue special advice on dealing with the potentially life threatening heat. However, she has issued a series of rules to maintain the decorum of the city and aimed mostly at so-called uncivil tourists.
1) Taking a dip in the fountains has long been forbidden. Inspired by Anita Ekberg's midnight stroll in the Trevi Fountain in Fellini's La Dolce Vita every year tourists and a few attention seeking minor actresses have tried to mimic the star, and not only in the Trevi Fountain. The Barcaccia at the foot of the Spanish Steps, the various fountains on Piazza Navona as well as the large basins at the base of the Altar to the Nation have all hosted some impromptu bathers, most of whom were then greeted by the municipal police and fined (450 euros).
2) All over the city there are small drinking fountains with a spout, these are known as nasoni (big noses after their distinctive curved spouts). There are in fact 2,500 of them, 280 of which are situated within the city walls. Romans, tourists and animals can all drink from them though last year due to the low water level of Lake Bracciano which supplies Rome with much of its drinking water a third of them were switched off. Etiquette dictates that to drink you place your hand on the spout so that water gushes up and out through a hole in the top of the spout and makes it easy to drink, or cup your hand below the flow to direct the water into your mouth. Putting ones head below the spout or even worse on the spout is considered rude (and unhygienic) and thanks to the new rules could result in a fine.
3) Wheeled suitcases cannot be dragged down steps such as the Spanish steps lest they damage the expensively refurbished (by Bulgari) monument. The rule also applies to prams. And all historic steps around the city.
4) The Spanish steps are also no longer to be considered a picnic site, no messy dripping ice creams can be eaten while seated on them and enjoying that classic pastime of people watching. Even less tolerated are the wedges of pizza with their staining dollops of tomato and oil. The messy eating rule applies to all historic monuments and sites.
5) On hot days men cannot walk around bare chested, and do not even think of dressing up as a centurion. The centurions that plied their trade (getting photographed by tourists) near the colosseum and the imperial fori have also been outlawed.
6) Other recent bans include no busking on public transport, no organised pub crawls, no public drunkenness, no illegal street trading and ticket touting and for the Romans who hang their clothes outside their windows, no clothes lines hanging between buildings.
And, in a rare moment of logical thinking and organisation, the town hall has said that tourists will be able to pay the fines directly via their bank cards and digital payment systems. They know only too well how difficult it is to get tourists to pay fines once they have returned to their home countries!
But for the majority of people these rules are just common sense. So resist the urge to throw yourselves into the cold waters of the fountains and grab an ice-cream, preferably seated in the 'gelateria' or on its terrace, and relax. No the 'vigili urbani' (street police aka traffic wardens) aren't looking at you.
