Thursday, January 18, 2007

CLOSED TO TOURISM


This is the Church of Santa Maria di Betlemme, the one which contains the famous terracotta crib. I hope that you can just see that there are notices on two of the very closed doors: these have been placed there to advise tourists that the church has been closed to them because the staff have been laid off and the unfortunate would-be visitors are asked to contact the city administrators. Now, what tourist, even if they are fluent in Italian, has the time to do that?! Can the city administrators imagine the disappointment and exasperation of a tourist who only has a day, or even a few hours, to spend in Modica and has read about this church in their guidebook? My beloved Modica, if you want tourism, you are going to have to do better than this! [The notice should be displayed in several languages, for a start.]

4 comments:

Lee said...

Certainly is being very short-sighted...someone should tell them! Any ideas, Welsh? ;)

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Lee. Well, I'm always telling my friends I'm going to write to the Mayor, so maybe I should actually do it!

Ballpoint Wren said...

That IS bad. When we went to France, it was awfully hard to understand the exhibits at all the museums because everything was in French only. Our trip would've been much more enjoyable if we could've understood what we were viewing.

Welshcakes Limoncello said...

Hi, Bonnie. Where in France was this? I agree that annotations in museums should be in several languages.

Counters


View My Stats