Following the death of Giovanna Maria Giomarino, the tour guide who died at the Colosseum while she was working, the president of AGTA Associazione Guide Turistiche Abilitate, Isabella Ruggiero, published a lengthy post on the association’s Facebook page highlighting how Giovanna Maria’s death “makes dramatically topical and evident the physical exertion to which the body is subjected during the work of a guide.” “We had already emphasized months ago in an interview,” Ruggiero explains, “the urgency of greater protection and the inclusion of the profession among the usurious jobs. Almost all guides already suffer at a ’young’ age from pathologies that usually arise in elderly individuals or in sportsmen, because we subject our bodies (knees, ankles, etc.) to exertion for an extremely long time (an average of 8 hours a day) and often with a considerable load of bags with weights on the shoulders, all on routes that are not always easy (broken Roman roads, ancient stairs with very steep steps, climbs and descents) and in often prohibitive temperatures (in summer up to 40 degrees in outdoor areas, on the asphalt of cities and archaeological areas without shade, as well as frost and rain in winter). All of which makes us susceptible to premature arthritis, fractures and a host of other ailments.Where, however, the career of the sportsman is short, the driving cannot stop, because with the current situation he does not see a pension - and what a miserable pension for those on the Separate Management Fund - before the age of 70.”
“We need more protections and to see our profession included among the usurious ones,” says the AGTA president. “However, the death of our colleague also brings up again a number of issues that the Park Board and the Ministry have ignored and dismissed all these past years. First of all, the need to change the opening hours of the Colosseum Archaeological Park in the summer,” she says. “It is useless to talk every year about a ’heat emergency’ as if this were something new: climate change is a fact of life and already for some years working at the Roman Forum from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. is unbearable. The Ministry of Culture should take note of these needs and bring forward the opening hours of the Colosseum and the Forum/Palatine from the beginning of June to at least the end of August, especially since in June and July, the months of the very high season, the number of visitors is extremely high and therefore diluting the admissions over a greater number of hours can only benefit the monument by improving flows. Currently, the Colosseum’s summer opening hours of 8:30 a.m. and the Forum’s 9:00 a.m. are inadequate. We have been advocating for three years to advance the opening of the entire Park to 7:00 a.m. and to postpone the closing time by one hour. These changes would benefit the public health, everyone: visitors, guides and internal workers. And they need to be thought out and organized well in advance, now for next year.”
The post also highlights another problem, that of the paths inside the Colosseum. “For years we have been asking for changes and improvements. By now tourism is made up of a huge percentage of children, the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as people with physical problems that cannot be classified as disabilities but make it difficult to move around,” it reads. “If the Park cannot allow everyone to use the elevator to go upstairs because the elevators are not enough for everyone (and that’s right, they are not enough for everyone), neither can it force everyone to go up and down the monument’s steep stairs, putting the health of visitors and tour operators at risk, nor force guides to sign forms if they think the group cannot physically get upstairs. It is necessary to modify and improve the internal routes and streamline the rules. And in any case, serious thought needs to be given to building more elevators-the current ones are not enough.”
“To those who have been responding for three years with a no to our request to lengthen the hours and many others with bureaucratic reasons related to janitors and funds and cleaning schedules, etc, we reply by first saying that lengthening the hours would bring more tickets and more revenue, and then by asking where the Park’s revenue has gone since May 2024, since CoopCulture’s concession ended: since then, all the organization has been taken over by the Park, even with the very justification that in this way all the revenue that used to go to the private concessionaire would go to the public coffers. It follows that for more than a year much more income has been coming into the Park and the state than before: why is it not being used to improve the enjoyment of the Park?”
“We therefore ask the new Director of the Colosseum Park, Quilici, to convene the professional associations as soon as possible and to set up a permanent table with them in order to listen to problems and proposals and arrive at better regulations and conditions both for all those who work inside the Park (employees and external operators) and for all those who visit it,” concludes President Isabella Ruggiero.
Photo by AGTA - Association of Licensed Tourist Guides.
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| Isabella Ruggiero (AGTA president): "profession of tour guide be among the wearing jobs" |
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