La Bella Vita is our regular look at the real culture of Italy – from language to cuisine, manners to art. This newsletter is published weekly, and you can receive it directly to your inbox: go to newsletter preferences in 'My Account' or follow the instructions in the newsletter box below.
People-watch in any major Italian city, and I bet you’ll spot at least one tourist not-so-discreetly adjusting a money belt tucked under their t-shirt. These belly-swaddling caches are a must-have for a trip to Europe, if you listen to internet forum commenters worried about travelling outside the US and becoming the victim of a crime (ironically, might I add).
I'm singling out my country-people here, but I’m sure there are similar anti-theft 'hacks' followed by tourists hailing from elsewhere.
For travellers, clickbait-y headlines about street thefts can paint a worrying picture of the crime rate in Italy’s cities.
While the buzz around every sticky-handed watch thief or purse snatcher can seem a bit overplayed, the data does support that there is a problem with theft in the country.
Thefts have been on the rise in the last couple of years, according to Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore's most recent analysis of crime data from the interior ministry.
But are high-profile 'snatch and grab' crimes something travellers should be concerned about? Or is it just what makes the news?
How common is street theft in Italy's tourist hotspots?
In northern Italy, the authorities are out in force this summer not to stomp out crime but to police tourists’ bad behaviour.
While once touted as a less-crowded alternative to Italy’s beaches, the north has braced for greater numbers of tourists this summer on the heels of the popular Milan-Cortina Olympics.
Local authorities started rolling out press releases in the spring, issuing warnings about new measures to crack down on unruly tourists.
Starting this month, tourist hotspots across the Dolomites have brought in more park rangers – and even the police – to manage the chaos and, they hope, protect the fragile mountain ecosystem.
Months of strategizing and planning seem not to have been enough, though. Earlier this month, a video went viral on social media showing a long queue of tourists at the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, where hundreds waited in the sun for more than an hour for an overwhelmed shuttle service.
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Italy's Dolomites deploy police and rangers to curb tourist crowds
The Bad Bunny concert in Milan was sulla bocca di tutti – on everyone’s lips – for many months. Tickets worth hundreds of euros sold out promptly for the Puerto Rican artist's only show in Italy, where more than 10 percent of young people speak Spanish.
So it was complete and utter disappointment for 80,000 concert-goers when the show came to an abrupt end after just 40 minutes.
Strong winds, lightning and hail started battering the crowd at the outdoor venue, as seen in videos of the stampeding crowd seeking shelter, with some sustaining injuries, AFP reported.
But a ruined concert wasn't the only impact of the weekend's storms. A wide area as far as 200 kilometres away from Milan in the province of Ferrara, hailstones of up to nine centimetres in diameter damaged cars, houses and crops.
Violent hail in Italy in mid-July… It sounds like a mad lib.
But incidents like last weekend's are increasingly becoming a reality in Italy, particularly in the north.
Northern Italy is emerging as the world-leading hotspot for severe hailstorms, according to a recent study.
Giant hailstones measuring more than five centimetres – larger than a golf ball – are regularly reported during northern Italy's intense summer storms in recent years, and researchers say they'll only become more common.
Violent hail batters northern Italy as severe storms grow more frequent
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