AND FINALLY

Selfies make Florence a tourist hell

WE ESCAPED to Tuscany for our first and last week of holiday this year. These days I like being at home with my lovely things around me — and the dogs. In truth, the horrors of Florence didn’t help.

You might wonder how I can use that word of one of the most wonderful cities in the world. Fairness demands a correction: the city is still glorious, but its visitors are not.

I was last there in July 1969, when my first husband and I had just finished university finals and went camping in France and Italy for a month.

We wandered into the great cathedral and marvelled at its glory. In the Uffizi Gallery my 22-year-old self, a passionate art lover, shed tears in front of works by Giotto, Duccio and Botticelli I had only seen in books. My spirit was uplifted.

This time any tears would have stemmed from anger and sadness. What a change! The noisy queues for the Duomo snaked all round the building, and everywhere stupid people waved selfie sticks as they posed in front of the glories of Western civilisation, making themselves more important than what it represented.

Walking through the Uffizi was hell. We stood in amazement as tourists pushed and shoved to get to the front of a swirling crowd before a famous painting like Botticelli’s The Birth Of Venus, raise the phone, snap, then march away. So many pathetic, meaningless selfies in front of great art! Why? They did not look at anything. I bear witness to that depressing fact.

This year Florence staggers under the weight of a record 11 million visitors so far.

An experienced English tour guide told me it’s becoming intolerable and that the Russian, Korean and Japanese groups are by far the worst, for sheer rudeness as well as indifference. Where will it end?

Our holiday was lovely, but those scenes haunt me, summing up the chaos and emptiness of modern life. It’s good to be home.