American Graffiti? You were never in the running...

The entrance to Juliet's balcony in Verona, where you will find the most pointless notice in Italy - if you look closely on the left, you'll see that the entire wall is covered!

Here's a close up of the wall.










American Graffiti may be the name of a famous film, but when it comes to the real thing, the Italians have cornered the market.
I went to Italy in the summer, and was staggered to find a rash of graffiti almost everywhere I went. I was re-visiting places I had previously been to, and didn't remember graffiti being quite so ubiquitous, but maybe it has always been there. The disappointing thing for me was that it was so indiscriminate - even the Doge's Palace in Venice had been scrawled on. Obviously, so many tourists visit Venice that it could have been German or English graffiti, but having seen five or six Italian cities all similarly daubed, my bet is that it was homegrown stuff.


I did a bit of research, and the very Italian-sounding word 'graffiti' is actually an Italian word! Though the first daubings were found in Turkey, the Romans were huge graffiti artists, so no wonder the Italians are such prolific vandals - it's part of their culture. Now I am part Italian, and don't feel the need to immortalise myself by scribbling on city walls, but maybe my need to blog comes from some latent graffitic tendency!

I know some people consider it to be an art form, and maybe that does work in very urban settings, but please, you Italians - keep your marker pens off the marble!!