 |
When this photograph was taken in April, 2006, trendy young Italians were
declaring their love to one another by attaching a padlock to historic bridges in Rome,
Florence and other romantic cities and throwing the key into the river. Love locks proliferated quickly in Italy. The lamps atop two posts on the Ponte Milvio collapsed under the accumulated weight. City officials began removing the locks and installed posts and chains to accommodate new locks safely. Today, most love locks are left by tourists. Inspiration for the Italian ritual was attributed by a New York Times article to a scene in Federico Moccia’s novel, Ho Voglia di Te (I Want You), and the subsequent movie adaptation. In the novel, a young man declares his eternal love at Rome's Ponte Milvio by locking a chain around a light post and throwing the key into the Tiber River.In fact, Mr. Moccia did not invent the tradition. Love locking dates to antiquity in China and is still widely practiced there. Love padlocks appeared in Pecs, Hungary in the early 1980s and subsequently elsewhere across Eastern Europe. "Locking love" is the primary tourist attraction of Love Locks, Nevada.
|
|||||
|
Love Locks, Ponte Vecchio, Florence, Italy, 2006 |
epigraph | |||||
| « |
7 /12 |
|||||