Here is another example how not to become a victim in Rome. You could hardly make this stuff up. I walked into a bar not too far from the Colosseum at about 5:30 PM. The photo below is one shot in time. There was the green coat hanging on a peg, and three seats to my right when I walked in. I like to stand so I stood in front of the coat. In the seat at the far right was a young lady tourist, trying to speak Italian to the bartender. Most of her words were in english, with a very strong British accent.

A guy came in and sat down in the chair next to where I was standing, and starts trying to speak to the bartenders in Italian, but they couldn't understand each other. Some of his words were French. I think he knew a little bit of it and was trying to use it as a common language. That left the seat in the middle open.

Then a lady walked in and took the middle seat, the one with the black and grey jacket over it. She's 100% from the USA. The "French" guy, the British women, and the American woman, little by little, start talking to each other. Pretty soon, the lady from the USA pulls out a cigarette, and says she needs to smoke. The French guy and the British lady say sure, and they all go outside, which is when I took the photo below.

Unattended is the "French" guy's coat on the peg, the red bag with whatever the lady from the USA just purchased, and the British woman's purse. The only person nearby besides me was a worker whose head you can barely see on the top left of the photo, because she was back in the kitchen.

You can't foresee something like getting your purse stolen while in church, but this is another example of how silly people behave when visiting a foreign country, and then complain when their wallet, phone, or purse was stolen.