If you were ever to be looking for a small child who got lost and knows to stay stationary when the child notices the parent isn’t visible/proximate, then which place is easier for the parent to find a waiting lost child: the Spanish Steps or Villa Borghese?

As I see it, a park area that is akin to a square of .5 miles on each side is a more difficult place to find someone than a bunch of steps that are an easily remembered and found landmark and that provides visibility to conduct a search in a way a park of Villa Borghese’s size just doesn’t. Surely someone could use a named F&B venue as a place to meet up or a landmark in a park of trees and shrubs, but that may not fly over as well for one or more reasons as the Spanish Steps.

But this all doesn’t matter, as what is driving such a ban on loitering on the Steps has nothing to do with trying to help people find each other. It seems to come in the bigger vein of frustration from suffering large crowds of tourists and too many tourists behaving just as badly as some locals do during crowded festivals/events.

It’s sort of interesting how a place that wanted more tourists (and welcomed more of that) can end up with extremely frustrated locals who got more than that which they expected. For example, some places that got few or no big international cruise ships may at first have local business interests wanting a few more big boats (or as many as they can get), but when they get what they want, they don’t want all that they get with it. And by the time an action is taken against a problem of this sort, it’s akin to trying to treat a symptom of a disease at the expense of treating the disease itself.