ROME HAS AN ASTONISHING GRAFFITI PROBLEM
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In England and the US we are used to seeing graffiti, but not on elegant buildings hundreds or even thousands of years old.
It is hard for the visitor to Rome to grasp how such beautiful architecture and historic landmarks can be taken for granted in such a casual way as to think nothing of defacing it.

Or perhaps it is us in England who are the true philistines for having torn down so much of our own architectural heritage in favour of faceless concrete shopping-malls and multi-storey car-parks.
One thing seems clear from Rome's example though - Decadent and irresponsible youth behavour cannot wholly be blamed on environment, though much of the graffiti seen on the noble marble edifices of old Rome may indeed be rooted in anarchistic reaction to old values and centuries of government hypocrisy by youths living in slum tower-blocks on the outskirts of Rome; It is not the first time in history that Rome has been sacked, burned and flattened, or collapsed in on itself as a consequence of negligent and decadent self indulgence by succesive governments.

Thus a nation and a culture such as Italy which has historically placed so high a value on art and sensual delight as first considerations when designing civic architecture or expressing the ideals of it's regime cannot be surprised if successive generations of Romans seek to imprint the city-scape with their own pet forms of contemporary art, in this case, graffiti.
However, it is at the same time disappointing that the perpetrators of this graffiti cannot conceive a more 'home-grown' style of expression. Both on the door pictured above, in general around Rome, and particularly on the sides of Rome's subway train carriages, the aerosol graffiti is nothing more than a faithful copying of the rap-culture aerosol lettering forms originating in black inner city areas of the United States: A culture which has nothing to do with the Mediterranean way of life.

The Isola Tiberina, seen from the Garibaldi Bridge. On this beautiful and mysterious island in the middle of the Tiber River in central Rome, some of this gigantic grafitti dates back to the 1970's when graffiti was a little more politically or romantically oriented than today's gangland yoof scrawling. While the fuzz manage to largely prevent modern additions to the display, curiously, the older stuff is allowed to remain. The two figures walking in the distance on the right of the island give an idea of the scale of the graffiti.

If Italy hopes to raise future generations of artisans of the calibre and originality of the Renaissance, it is clearly failing miserably to inspire them with new, original creative hope and aspirations. Italy's love-affair with America has continued for several decades now, and American pop-culture has always threatened to engulf Italian tradition, as indeed elsewhere in modern Europe.

Sadly, nowhere is this degenerating homogenisation of popular art, fashion, music, culture and lifestyles from North America more powerfully witnessed than in these aerosolled stones of Rome.