US tourist throws scooter down Rome’s Spanish Steps, causing €25,000 damage | Italy

An American tourist has caused €25,000 (£21,000) worth of damage after hurling her electric scooter down Rome’s Spanish Steps.

The incident was filmed by a passerby in the early hours of Friday. Police later caught up with the 28-year-old and fined her and a 29-year-old male companion, who had wheeled his e-scooter down the 18th-century marble steps.

The pair were also banned from returning to the famous monument, a Unesco world heritage site that underwent a €1.5m restoration in 2015. The incident came two weeks after a visitor from Saudi Arabia drove a Maserati down the flight of steps. People were banned from sitting on the Spanish Steps in 2018.

Tourist numbers in the Italian capital have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with intense crowds converging at cultural landmarks. But the recovery of the sector has also seen the return of tourists flouting rules of decorum. In April, two Dutch visitors were fined €1,000 for stepping into the Trevi fountain, which was a fairly common occurrence before the pandemic.

A few days before, a 39-year-old Argentinian man was charged with breaking strict no-fly zone rules after crashing a drone into the roof of a prominent monument in central Rome.

He had been flying his drone in Piazza Venezia when he lost control of the device and sent it crashing into the roof of Palazzo Venezia, a 15th-century building from where the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini delivered some of his most famous speeches.

Such incidents are not exclusive to Rome: a week earlier two Mexican tourists crashed their drone into the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Venice is also a popular target for badly behaved tourists. Police renewed their crackdown on uncouth visitors to the city last summer, saying the return of tourism had coincided with “signs of urban degradation”.

Among those fined was a French tourist who paddled along the Grand Canal on his stand-up paddleboard, and two German women who sunbathed in bikinis by San Stae church.