As the day draws to a close in Rome, tourists are enjoying a nightcap at a bar on Piazza della Rotonda. In front of them stands the majestic Pantheon, the imposing domed temple built by Emperor Hadrian.
To their right, however, is a scene less befitting the piazza, famed for its elegance and history. A photomural of the temple covers boarding that surrounds a building under renovation and as the night gets later it is used to prop up a pile of rubbish bags and boxes discarded by nearby restaurants.
The rubbish will be cleared by the time the tourists have breakfast, but not before they have taken note. “Rome is beautiful but they can’t seem to manage the rubbish situation, can they?” remarked a visitor from Austria.
Residents, including Pope Francis, have long lamented the Italian capital’s degrado (decay) – the word frequently used to sum up a city in a perennial state of disrepair, from its rubbish-strewn streets, potholes, scrappy parks and medieval buildings marred by graffiti to closed metro stations and buses that either never come or occasionally combust.
But visitors are now starting to rebel, with many begrudging having to pay the tax for spending a night in the city only to get scant services in return. The Rome tourist levy – which starts at about €4 a night for a two- or three-star hotel and rises to €7 for a five-star – is the highest in Europe.
“Guests are asking why the tourist tax is high in respect to a city where the services don’t really exist,” Roberto Wirth, the owner and managing director of Hotel Hassler, a five-star hotel at the top of the Spanish Steps in the centre of the city, told the Guardian.
“There was a plan [by the local authority] for it to be increased, but hotel owners objected. There was no justification for it.” …