Rome, Tourist Heaven, Is Awash in Bird Poop and Garbage

Daily Beast ^ | July 19, 2019 | Barbie Latza Nadeau

[C19fan]

On a blistering July morning in Rome, a man in a white hazmat suit is collecting samples from a pile of festering and oddly shimmering liquid that has seeped from a dumpster into the cobblestone lanes near the Roman Colosseum.

Around the corner, traffic is backed up on a major street as a massively overfed seagull and a diseased-looking raven tussle over the carcass of a bloated rat. Garbage bags ripped open by rodents spill the contents—rotting food and curdled milk—onto picturesque squares. Citizens have taken matters into their own hands, liberally scattering rat poisoning in the overflowing dumpsters, but that means the smell of decomposing dead rodents and rotting waste permeates the air. And let’s not even talk about the size of the cockroaches that scatter when the city’s church bells toll.

[Albion Wilde]

That's the Neapolitian style (Naples is where pizza was first invented). Street vendors even sell little squares of pizza for breakfast along the Spaccanapoli.