Experts unconvinced by Roberto Gualtieri’s mooted timescale for river to be reopened for public bathing
Rome hopes to welcome swimmers back to the River Tiber within five years, the city’s mayor has announced, drawing inspiration from Paris, where the Seine was reopened for public bathing this summer for the first time in a century.
During a visit on Thursday to the Osaka Expo in Japan, Roberto Gualtieri said a working group had been set up to study the feasibility of the clean-up project.
“We are pleased to have already established that this is an entirely achievable goal: within five years, we will be able to swim in the Tiber,” Gualtieri said.
But the Italian media and experts reacted with scepticism, suggesting it could take rather longer to reduce current pollution to an acceptable level, particularly in a country where public works can have notoriously lengthy timescales.
