Parks prince risks life in battle against lazy gardeners

The noble Doria family is no stranger to power and violent struggle, producing generations of Italian admirals, cardinals and land owners. When Marco Doria, who claims to be descended from the Genoan dynasty, was given the apparently simple task of cleaning up Rome’s dirty parks, however, he took on a foe he had never expected – the ancient capital’s wily and possibly violent gardeners.

Doria, who uses the title prince, escaped death this week when a bomb was hidden next to his car’s windscreen wipers.

Doria has faced a series of threats since Virginia Raggi, Rome’s mayor, hired him to restore the city’s ragged, overgrown parks, including Villa Doria Pamphilj, which his family once owned.

He has confronted staff who moonlight on other jobs during their shifts. He has also poked his nose into the illegal renting of park properties to squatters, fly tipping, and suspiciously inflated payments for maintenance.

Doria said the bomb must be connected to his work for the city.

‘‘In the past two years, I have denounced many grave irregularities, including Mafia activity. I have become an irritant.’’

Doria has also found on his car a picture of his face with a cross scrawled over it, slashed tyres, and a dead eagle hanging from a wing mirror.

Poisoned water has been left in his office. His pet rottweiler was killed last year after it ate meat packed with nails that had been lobbed over his garden wall.

Suspicions are growing that the attacks are linked to disgruntled, underperforming city workers trying to protect their perks.

A series of attacks on vehicles and equipment used by the city’s gardening department has been linked to disgruntled subcontractors who lost work when officials were arrested after it was alleged that they took kickbacks.