As someone who travels to Rome several times a year for work and who lived there back in the ‘80’s, I’ve seen a steady decline of behavior by foreign tourists in recent years. It’s a problem with messy eating, leaving garbage on the steps, camping on the steps and sleeping on the steps. On some days, one can’t even find a pathway to get up or down the steps between the selfie photographers, the garbage, the sleepers, the campers and everyone else just trying to get a little rest and take in the view. And the worst of it is the few causing all the problems and trashing the place would not do so in their own countries but feel free to trash Italian landmarks.

From my experience yes, they are blocking passage and not just in the summer. And it is not just a rest break, it is hanging out and drinking and leaving the trash after they are done.

The behavior has gotten worse — I have been traveling to Rome since the late 80s when I first went as an undergrad. Some years I was in Rome 3-4 times a year but it has been at least annually since that period.

The amount of trash that is left has gotten worse and the generally disrespectful behavior has increased.

I support this legislation but it is depressing that it had to come to this.

The crowds and the mess on the Spanish Steps have gotten worse over the years, way more at some times of the year than at other times of the year.

When it comes to the banning of people sitting out on the Steps who may be enjoying BYO food/drink and/or waiting for a meet-up, I suspect that the result may be more people crowding commercial food/beverage-serving interests in the area. Personally, I would prefer a nice outside place to wait without being made to “over-consume” food/beverages — at least when the weather is suitable.

All one has to do is climb the Spanish Steps to the top and turn left and you’re in Villa Borghese - a great park where you can have all that.

Indeed, while still allowed. But as a place for non-locals to meet up, parks — that one too — present problems that a more constrained place with greater public line of sight visibility doesn’t.

Having just been on a hunt to try to meet up with separated travel party members in a park area much smaller than Villa Borghese, I would say that relatively large parks are a recipe to have greater trouble meeting up than a site that has one way in and one way out where visibility isn’t as obstructed as in a park full of trees and other tall shrubs.

Villa Borghese resembles more a park than a jungle so the visibility is good. It’s not an enormous park and it has a lot of landmarks within it that are well known and easy to spot. But if that’s not appealing, there are plenty of other famous landmarks in the historical center of Rome where which one could meet up and sit down while waiting. I often meet people at the Trevi Fountain, which is close to the Spanish Steps or another fun meet up is at the Pantheon (where one can grab some steps to sit at near the fountain) and listen to excellent street musicians.

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.