If you’re like me, you were amazed at just how many don’ts you were expected to navigate to become a grown-up. Adults who broke the rules were shown on the news, arrested, put on trial—sometimes becoming the talk of the town. It seemed like the older you got, the more things you couldn’t do. But we kids just stayed out of it, absorbed in figuring out how to clear obstacles and beat our Super Mario Brothers game.
From the outside, Italy may seem like a liberal country unbound by rules in many ways. People are certainly friendly here, with generous dispositions that don’t tend to get wrapped up in trifles. But… not so fast! As a foreigner, I’ve tripped up doing something that I figured would be perfectly fine and gotten immediately criticized by the Italians for it.
I was recently surprised at how strict they were at the beach during the summer vacation season. Open-air restaurants, cafés, and street food vendors often line the roads leading to the shore, and it’s not uncommon to see women heading in to eat wearing bathing suits and sarongs, or men without shirts. But in the Cinque Terre (“five lands”) region of Liguria, this is strictly prohibited.
When I probed even deeper, I found that they even made a rule against walking around in beach sandals in 2019. I heard they were fining people between 50 and 2500 euros, but I actually didn’t see any people or shops giving out warnings to people walking around in sandals, though it was hard to find anyone who wasn’t wearing them. Unlike the boardwalks along other Italian beaches, the Cinque Terre paths are more rocks than sand, so the injunction is actually meant to prevent accidents along the steep mountainsides and paths winding among the rocky cliffs.
Sorrento, which is famous for the canzone “Torna a Surriento” (“Come Back to Sorrento”), has a prohibition against sex shops. The town of Lucca in Tuscany only allows Italian restaurants, prohibiting foreign cuisine. Tursi in the province of Matera doesn’t allow people to walk their dogs in the downtown area. The mayor got so angry with people not picking up after their pets that after getting more and more frustrated, he finally made dog-walking illegal—though the law was later overturned. I wonder if the people learned their lesson and eventually got their act together.
There are other prohibitions that seem odd at first. Basilicata is known for its dramatic suspension bridges, and the paths feature what at first appear to be ordinary traffic signs. But when you look closer, you see that they read “Romantic Place”, recommending that people take a moment to share a kiss.
Maybe we can get more signs like this, suggesting that we DO something instead of telling us not to!
