Rome's new mayor banishes photo gladiators
Rome's gladiators are back – but not for long.
Since an ordinance from Rome's interim Mayor, Francesco Paolo Tronca, expired last month tacky photo-souvenir gladiators have been gathering outside the Eternal City's top tourist locations.
But Rome's new mayor, Virginia Raggi decided to banish the gladiators once more during her first council meeting on Monday.
At the meeting, the city's new Five Star Movement council introduced a new ordinance against the photo-souvenir workers, which will see them banned from in front of the city's historic centre and fined if they are caught peddling their wares.
“Rome is finally off and running!” Raggi posted on Facebook following her first meeting.
“From tomorrow a new
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One city council report even suggested the workers were making as much as 2,000 a week tax free but the workers themselves scoff at such figures.
“I'm taking home between 40 and 50 a day” one centurion told La Repubblica. “I can only ask for a free offer, which means I take anything between one and five euros per photo.”
“Following the Previous ban, I was forced to beg for money on the street because I had no other way of making money,” the centurion added.
In spite of most centurions claim's the photo souvenir workers claims they are merely trying to make an honest living, most people see them as opportunistic rip-off merchants, if not thieves.
Last summer, a group were filmed robbing 100 from the wallet of a Romanian journalist after he posed for a photo, while stories abound of jet-lagged tourists who have been sweet-talked into a snap and then pressured into handing over anything upwards of 20 for the