ROME -- Levels of indecency in the Eternal City’s iconic Piazza Navona are becoming intolerable, with people swimming in its fountain and swarms of rats regularly appearing at night, residents say. Recently, a woman performed a strip-tease before jumping into Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, commissioned by Pope Innocent X almost 400 years ago.

 Other examples of blasphemous behaviour in the sacred square include uncollected piles of rubbish and drunken foreigners lying on their backs in pools of sweat, just metres away from Borromini’s famous church of St Agnese in Agone.

 The scene of such great artistic inspiration, it is surely not with scurrying mice in mind that Jep Gambardella declared in ‘Grande Belleza’ as he was walking through the square: “At 65 years of age, I have understood one thing. That I cannot lose any more time doing things I don't feel like doing.”

 The famous actor Alberto Sordi was almost assaulted there by two thugs, before they finally realised who he was and spared him. “Sometimes, even hooligans have a conscience. But soon, they will lose it.” In light of the recent squalor seen in Piazza Navona, it is difficult to question just how right Sordi was. 

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