When famous poets Shelley and Byron headed off on their round-Europe adventures, a little light con artistry was par for the course. The Grand Tour – a visit to key artistic sites in Italy, traditionally conducted by upper-class young men in the 18th and 19th centuries – was seen as a way for the nobility to mature and learn life skills. And, if they ran into trouble along the way, so much the better.
Writing in Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour , Sarah Goldsmith notes: “In the era of fashionable games of chance, elite families understood the Grand Tour as an enormous, costly jeux de societé; a gamble with the family’s finances, with their sons’ lives and reputations, and with a whole variety of hazards.” Rome’s Trevi Fountain is a key location for pickpockets. Credit: iStock A fabled version of Italy fuelled the fire.
Visitors were taught to expect fights and robberies – though, in reality, they may have been more likely to fall foul of their guide’s plot to flog a dodgy ancient amphora. The country may have been known as a place to find cheap antiques, but there was a reason why prices were so low. Tourism has become more mainstream with the passing centuries, but some cons are as old as time – and new research suggests that Italy may still be the place where European tourists are most likely to be targeted for petty crime.
Travel insurance website Quotezone.co.uk’s 2024 European Pickpocketing Index, which sets the number of.