On top of its usual problems of rising flood waters, sinking palazzi, tourist congestion and corrosive pigeon droppings, Venice faces a new challenge that city officials are struggling to unpick.
Inspired by a bestselling romantic novel, young lovers are rushing to attach padlocks to the city’s historic Rialto bridge, risking damage to the stonework and requiring policemen with bolt cutters to remove them.
The craze, inspired by I Want You, the 2006 novel by Federico Moccia, involves couples writing their names on the padlock, swearing eternal love and throwing the keys into the canal.
Stefania Battaggia, the head of Venice’s Office for Urban Quality, said the trend was pushing the city’s reputation for romance too far.
“It’s against the law and the rust from the locks risks damaging the stone,” she said. “We have found 50 of them on metal stanchions but have yet to nab anyone while they are in the act.”
Battaggia said that young couples had first shown a preference for Venice’s wooden Ponte del Accademia, where up to 300 padlocks are now fixed, despite a clean up with boltcutters in February.
But the 16th century Rialto, with its arches and central portico, was a more sensitive target, she said. “It’s urgent we act because the problem is spreading to the Rialto, the symbol of the city.”
Moccia’s fictional padlocking took place at Rome’s Milvian bridge, which was known as a lovers’ hangout in Roman times and where Constantine won a decisive battle in 312 before becoming undisputed Roman emperor.
After the novel’s success, lampposts on the bridge were strung with so many padlocks they threatened to collapse, prompting Rome’s mayor to order special railings to be erected for the locks.
Padlocks and pens
Today, the area has been transformed from a quiet neighbourhood into a late-night drinking spot and vendors line up on the bridge to sell padlocks and pens.
The padlocking phenomenon also spread to Turin, Naples, Palermo and Florence, where police stripped 5 000 locks from the Ponte Vecchio and the mayor threatened a €43 fine for offenders.
In Verona, locks have been attached to the house from where the real life Juliet supposedly called out to Romeo.
“This phenomenon amuses me, I have never regretted it,” said Moccia on Tuesday. “Kids do want they want and this could not be controlled.”
Outside Italy, the practice has popped up in Paris, Madrid, Lithuania, Hungary, South Korea and even on the Great Wall of China, Italian newspaper La Repubblica stated on Tuesday. But the desecration of the Rialto was the last straw for La Repubblica, which denounced the padlocks in a furious front page editorial, calling for €3 000 fines and up to a year in jail for offenders who are caught in the act.
“The padlockers are neither poets, sculptors or artists but vandals and hooligans and the locks are ruining marble, iron and stone,” it stated, adding that the padlocks were a new and “vulgar” symbol of Italian love.
Moccia defended the trend and said that the padlocks were in fact a sign that Italian teenagers were learning good manners. “This phenomenon started thanks to a desire to leave walls clean,” he told La Repubblica. “It is better to have padlocks here than graffiti defacing our walls.” – guardian.co.uk