Only, they don’t just sit. Oblivious to the fact that the benches were carved by hand in the 16th century, they sit and eat, smearing sauces on the porous stone, which promptly stains. They also have been known to graffiti the gallery’s exterior. In videos of the episode shared widely on social media, the man can be seen diving from the side of 17th-century monument to applause from the gathered crowd. More than half a million French homes remained without electricity for a second day, mainly in the northwestern region of Brittany. Trains were halted in several areas and many roads remained closed. Last week Adriano Giannola, chairman of the Svimez, called for "big ideas" from the next government. "Whoever wins the election and goes on to govern the country must not think solely about the spending review and [economic] rigour," he said. "It is clear these are important, but for the south what is needed above all are strategies."

The rest of the national territory, where safety and prevention measures are advertised in public places and special sanitisations are performed on means of public transport. On 24 March, in a live-streamed press conference, Conte announced a new decree approved by the Council of Ministers. The decree imposed higher fines for the violation of the restrictive measures, and regulation of the relationship between government and Parliament during the emergency. It included also the possibility of reducing or suspending public and private transport, and gave the regional governments power to impose additional restrictive regulations in their regions for a maximum of seven days before being confirmed by national decree. [165] [166]Discover the world’s most intriguing experiences with our weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox. Barrier around the Trevi Fountain Annalisa: It is going to need a cultural revolution, a simply huge change both among men and among women that can and should be led by the media. However, [the media] sets a terrible example, and is unlikely to change under its current ownership structure Italy is peculiar in the wealth of tourism features the country has, and it’s unique in that people occupy these spaces in a way that doesn’t occur in many countries,” he says. Huge waves also pummelled the Adriatic shores of the Balkans, as strong winds uprooted trees and ripped off roofs. Ferry services connecting Croatia’s islands were suspended because of the weather. Storm Ciaran formed over the Atlantic and was driven by a powerful jet stream [Gaizka Iroz/AFP]

The incident has highlighted the problem of tourists behaving destructively in Italy – one that seemed to come to a head in summer 2022 when a slew of incidents around the country hit the headlines. If the conditions are different than 20 years ago, it is obvious to everyone,” Nello Musumeci, the government’s minister for civil protection, told Sky TG24, noting that weather systems in Italy have become more tropical in nature. This week, a young tourist was filmed allegedly carving what appeared to be the names of himself and his girlfriend into the wall of the Colosseum, sparking Italy’s culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano to call for a manhunt to identify the pair. The country is now in its longest recession in 20 years, the economy having contracted for the last six consecutive quarters and languished in more than a decade of almost non-existent growth. Unemployment is at more than 11%; for under-25s, it is more than 36%. Italy has the second highest ratio of sovereign debt to GDP in the EU. Annalisa. Bill and I first began to talk about Italy when I came to the Economist to interview him for L’Espresso magazine about the magazine’s notorious 2001 cover “Why Silvio Berlusconi is unfit to lead Italy”. He then turned the tables, asking me questions about why things in Italy work in the way they do and, when he decided to research and write his book, we talked some more. So as the Italian filmmaker he had talked to a lot about Italy, it wasn’t surprising that when he began to ponder about using film to tell the same story, he came to me. Turning any book into a documentary isn’t easy, especially when it includes a lot about economics. That is why I decided to take a creative, historical and quite literary approach, using Italy’s greatest poet, Dante, to provide a structure to the narrative.The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Italy on 31 January 2020, when two Chinese tourists in Rome tested positive for the virus. [1] One week later an Italian man repatriated to Italy from the city of Wuhan, China, was hospitalized and confirmed as the third case in Italy. [4] Clusters of cases were later detected in Lombardy and Veneto on 21 February, [5] with the first deaths on 22 February. [6] By the beginning of March, the virus had spread to all regions of Italy. [7] [8] [9] [10] A 17-year-old girl and her mother are believed to have been swept away by flood waters near the town of Senigallia as they tried to flee the area by car. This 13th-century king was the ruler of the Crown of Aragon, a confederation whose territory roughly coincided with the modern-day Spanish regions of Catalonia, Aragón and Valencia. Peter’s greatest claim to fame was the conquest of Sicily, which he completed in 1282. One of his successors reunited the island with the mainland, so that when the Crown of Aragon linked up with the Crown of Castile to form the Kingdom of Spain, the whole of southern Italy came under Spanish rule.

For many a historian, the long Spanish domination of the Mezzogiorno, as that part of Italy known, is the key to why its values are so different from those of the north. The aristocrats and hidalgos who became its imperial masters are blamed for infusing the region with a culture of leisure and an indifference to enterprise. What with terror threats ongoing throughout Europe and Italy’s notorious reputation for organized crime, as well as the country’s susceptibility to natural disasters, it’s a fair question. Italy is seen and judged by foreign tourists – and particularly Americans – through stereotypes that are rooted in films, especially “La Dolce Vita” and “Roman Holiday,” and through the image that foreigners have formed of us through [Italian] immigration,” he says. Centre-right deputy Claudio Barbaro (left) and Northern League deputy Fabio Rainieri (right) scuffle in the lower house of the Italian parliament in 2011. Photograph: Giuseppe Lami/EPABill: At present, the bad remains dominant, but we are not without hope. Civil society is awakening, trying to bring about change. From the top-down, things are depressing, but from the bottom-up there is cause for some optimism. Good Italy is stirring… The bullet-headed, chin-jutting ex-socialist who virtually invented fascism governed Italy from 1922 to 1943. For all but three years at the beginning, he was its dictator. It was Mussolini who allied with Nazi Germany and led Italy into World War II. A big mistake. It resulted in Italy being invaded by the Allies from the south. The hard-fought campaign that followed, as the Germans retreated up the peninsula, left a trail of destruction and suffering. Bill: Annalisa spotted the Smiths’ great 80s song and we both felt the title and the lyrics fitted perfectly. And self-declared Italy fans had better be careful. When the busts at the Vatican Museums were smashed last October, Mountain Butorac, who leads pilgrimages to Rome, told CNN he was worried there might be repercussions for all of us, not just the vandal. Q. Annalisa, I loved the animated sequences. How did you work with the animators to come up with such powerful images?

Italy’s debt mountain started to grow in the early 1970s. But by the time Craxi became the first non-Christian Democrat to head a government since the war, in 1983, it was still only 65 percent of GDP. When he left office four years later, it had climbed to 89 percent. There were several reasons for the rise: overspending, waste, inefficiency, insufficient taxation, a central bank policy that boosted the cost of servicing Italy’s existing debts and — not least — corruption. It’s also possible that Italy attracts people who have a broader interest than merely pursuing artistic, architectural and archaeological curiosity, and these people don’t necessarily fit in with the environment.” That idea of the dolce vita, that Italy is a place of freedom to let loose, isn’t doing its heritage any good.Last August, a weather station near Syracuse on the southern island of Sicily recorded 48.8C, which is thought to be the highest temperature ever measured in Europe. While the world fights a losing battle to keep the increase in global average temperatures below 1.5C, in Italy average temperatures over the past 10 years are already 2.1C higher than in pre-industrial times.