..............OTHERS MAKE IT THEIR LEGACY TO TAKE BEAUTY AWAY, by painting and scratching their ugly "macho" symbols of youthful rebellion, dissatisfaction and/or "artistic expression" all over everything that is good and right with the world ! (See also the picture below.) Not only lovely flowers like this are flourishing and overflowing in Italy, but also so is sad and obnoxious GRAFFITI - virtually everywhere you look, and far more so than in any other country I've ever been, including my own. But then, I don't hang around in the "ghetto" areas of town, so perhaps I don't know how bad it's gotten in America too. But this is beautiful ROME & VENICE we're talking about, and even away from urban areas inside the countryside of Italy, the graffiti problem we saw was just as bad! It is particularly sad to see many irreplaceable, artistic and historic buildings and monuments disfigured in this way.
More later in this Journal regarding the reasons the Italians believe are behind this social disgrace, caused in part by non-Italians we were told. There is also information about the political situation and system of government in Italy in the "Nettuno chapter", along with another photo of the graffiti. But we tried hard to avoid taking pictures of anything scribbled on, (these few slipped by us) because we wanted to remember Italy as the gorgeous country it really is!
2 comments:
Joan, I'm quite sure you don't need to go to the 'ghetto' area to find some american graffiti...and anyway some of them are really nice and artistic.
Hi Manuela, What I posted was that the graffiti problem in Italy is SO much worse than we remember it from decades ago in Italy (and it was bad then), but now it is literally everywhere. We saw it even in SO many places in the countryside when we traveled by train from Rome to Venice too. It saddened both your uncle and me to see this (as well as our friend Marco and many other Italians, I'm sure) because Italy has MANY MORE centuries of history than the USA has, along with so many beautiful ancient and irreplaceable things. It's a real sin (in our opinion) to deface and disrespect such a unique and beautiful country like Italy in this way! Even if SOME of the graffiti there is considered "art" by certain people, it doesn't belong on Italy's priceless treasures, and that's where we saw it much of the time. Joann
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