Paris has found a pungent way to make itself more toxic to tourists

Visiting Florence in 1817, the French novelist Stendhal took a funny turn: “As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation to the heart… the wellspring of life dried up within me and I was in constant fear of falling to the ground.”

He was not alone in suffering a violent physical reaction to the glories of Renaissance art. In 1989 Dr Graziella Magherini, the head of psychiatry at Florence’s Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, published The Stendhal Syndrome, in which she described 107 case studies, collected over 20 years, of patients who were stricken with a psychosomatic reaction to an overdose of culture.

If Tuscany is catnip to the aesthetically sensitive, Paris is henbane. The City of Light is notorious for the surly welcome it offers to visitors, but for some its ubiquitous Gallic s’en foutisme represents an unbearable psychic assault. Paris has its own, eponymous syndrome, to which Japanese and Chinese tourists are particularly prone. Finding the city nothing like the enchanting metropolis of whimsical altruism depicted in the film, Amélie, visitors afflicted with Paris syndrome succumb to hallucinations, anxiety, dizziness and sweating. The only cure, apparently, is to go straight home.

Characteristically, instead of adopting a remedial metropolitan charm offensive, Paris has found a way of making itself even more toxic. The French capital’s signature scent is not Chanel No 5 or Yves St Laurent’s evocative Paris, but an overpowering pong of pee.

Once it emanated from the numerous vespasiennes, or open urinals, installed in the 19th century with the aim of reducing public urination. But in a malodorous practical demonstration of the cyclical nature of history, the vespasiennes were phased out in the late 20th century, with a concomitant rise in public urination – to which the city’s innovative response has been the reintroduction of public urinals.

The snappily named Uritrottoir is a bright-red, rectilinear receptacle, prettily planted with flowers and poised above an absorbent mixture of sawdust and straw, which can eventually be recycled as compost. They may be visually striking and environmentally friendly, but their presence has been greeted with dismay by tourists and Parisians alike. “Paris is making itself ridiculous,” said a disgruntled resident.

Oh, surely not! Still, we might find in the Uritrottoir a pungent symbol of the paradox inherent in all holidays. We go away, expecting that “away” will offer two weeks worth of the luxe, calme et volupté seductively evoked in Baudelaire’s poem, “L’invitation au voyage”. Only to discover, like the Mole in The Wind in the Willows, that everything we really long for is to be found among the “familiar and friendly things” of home.

Meanwhile, in the Puy du

Fou theme park in western France, six rooks have been trained to clear up litter, in exchange for morsels of food. “They were motivated by the reward and they soon understood how the game worked,” observed the park’s rookwrangler, Christophe Gaborit. Humans, I gather, are almost as intelligent as rooks, so perhaps similar methods might eventually be considered to encourage visitors to the park to pick up their own litter – or even to refrain from dropping the stuff in the first place. read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion