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Topless Tourist’s Fountain Swim Sends Locals in Florence Over the Edge

The English-speaking visitor’s dip has angered residents of the “Cradle of the Renaissance”—and they’re demanding action.

Florence is proud to boast of its naked statues that attract tourists from around the world to the Italian city. After all, Michelangelo’s Statue of David is no shrinking violet at 17 feet high and nearly 12,500 pounds. But locals are not so happy when mere mortals strip off to cavort in the city’s fountains. Officials are apparently insisting on a “zero tolerance” crackdown on disrespectful tourists after an English-speaking woman was filmed swimming topless in the Piazza Santo Spirito in “La Bella Firenze.” The subject of the nighttime dip asks people sitting around the water: “Are you going to come in?” but nobody takes up her offer. A few days earlier, another female tourist clambered onto a statue of Bacchus across the city and simulated a sex act, further inflaming the Florentines. The incidents have led Confcultura, a cultural heritage group, to ask police in Italy to act more harshly against the tourists. But some of the locals believe the swimmer will get her comeuppance by falling sick from the dirty water in the fountain.