Rome’s famed Spanish Steps, known to generations of movie-goers for the scene in Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, has re-opened after a €1.3 million renovation paid for by the Italian jewelry brand Bulgari…but not without controversy.
The steps, which have also been known as a place for late-night street gatherings and wandering tourists near one of the city’s most-exclusive shopping streets, have been re-levelled, had cracked steps replaced and stains removed.
But Paolo Bulgari, company chairman, called at the opening for permanent fences to be built at top and bottom and for the steps to be locked at night against “barbarian” hordes of tourists. “It is a precious and fragile monument… Now that it’s been restored we cannot allow it to revert to being an open-air sewer. We cannot leave it to the barbarians who eat and drink there makeing it dirty.” He accused Romans of setting a bad example for tourists.
Bulgari’s idea got some support from high-end merchants in the nearby Via dei Condotti, but a flat turndown from Rome’s Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, who said “You can’t preserve precious monuments with fences.”
Rome has seen a great deal of criticism in recent years for the poor condition of some of its heritage sites; in recent years repairs and restorations of a number of them have been paid for by companies such as Fendi, Diesel and others in the fashion and luxury goods markets.
Above, the steps at night (Photo: Jean-Christophe Benoist / Wikimedia)
