A British man and his girlfriend have been banned from Venice’s historic metropolis centre after leaping into town’s Grand Canal.
The 35-year-old and his 25-year-old Romanian companion have been issued fines of €450 every (£388) and ordered to go away the lagoon metropolis for 48 hours, in keeping with Italian media.
Gondoliers noticed the pair bathing and reported them to the authorities. They have been reportedly celebrating the tip of a romantic getaway.
Local rules ban “acts contrary to decorum when bathing in the city’s waters”.
“The order, which was immediately enforceable, effectively put an end to their holiday,” town council mentioned in an announcement.
“I would like to thank the gondoliers for their cooperation and for promptly reporting the matter,” mentioned town’s vice mayor Elisabetta Pesce, praising the arrest.
“The municipal administration is committed to firmly combating disrespectful and uncivil behaviour, because protecting Venice means defending the dignity of a city that is unique in the world.”
The newest penalty follows a crackdown on misbehaving vacationers as a part of a wider backlash in opposition to overtourism within the metropolis. The native council has barred greater than 1,000 individuals from getting into town centre, which is a chosen Unesco World Heritage Site, for the reason that begin of the yr.
Members of the “Venice is not Disneyland” Facebook group expressed anger on the “senseless and dangerous” motion, with one particular person writing: “We don’t want these disrespectful tourists.”
Others demanded that the couple not be allowed to go away the nation till they’d paid their fines.
One native resident mentioned that the motion demonstrated “a complete lack of sensitivity and common sense” and a “cultural void” on the a part of vacationers.
The metropolis has seen quite a few flagrant violations of its guidelines in latest instances, together with vacationers illegally waterskiing on town’s famend canals and drunkenly diving from the Rialto Bridge.
One man was branded an “idiot” by town’s mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, after belly-flopping into the waters from a three-storey constructing sporting solely his boxers.
The metropolis was lately the situation of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’s wedding ceremony to journalist Lauren Sanchez, sparking outrage from locals and environmental campaigners.
Simone Venturini, deputy mayor of Venice, mentioned that town had been pressured to take drastic motion to handle the results of tourism.
“Venice is a city as beautiful as it is fragile,” he mentioned. “No one has a magic wand. Neither Venice nor other European cities grappling with the consequences of overtourism have one. Each place is considering its own approach.”