Leave A Lock If You Love Me

Milvio  Bridge of Rome

Soraya Melguizo | Milán
El Mundo.es
24 August, 2011

Rome, Florence, Verona,and now Venice. The love couples all over Italy have made a ritual by placing a lock in the main bridges of the big cities to profess their love for each other.

And not only in Italy.  In Paris, Lithuania, Hungary and even in the Great Wall of China, there is a similar "demonstration of love". But this time the city of waterways has determined that this is enough against a fashion that does not seem to put any frontiers.

For this reason, Venice is looking into the possibility of imposing a fine to those who dare to "mess up" with the aesthetics of the city.

Venice is not the only one against this public declaration of "eternal love". The ex mayor of Florence, Leonardo Domenici, imposed a fine of up to 50 Euros to whoever places a lock in the Vecchio Bridge after removing over 5,000 locks.  But soon after, new locks started to appear.

The fashion of leaving a lock in a bridge or a representative monument after which to throw away the key as a promise of eternal love came about as an influence of the book for adolescents "Three meters over the sky" written by Federico Moccia, writer and filmmaker.

In this book, the main characters hang a lock in the Milvio bridge of Rome. The international success of the novel, that was carried over to a film in Italy and recently in Spain, converted the Roman bridge into a symbol for love couples although such anecdote results in a real problem for the local administrators.  Source: El Mundo.es

In our last visit to Varsovia, we also saw several locks  by the bridge overlooking St. John's Cathedral and they were attached to both sides of the bridge.  They were not yet too many though and nothing compared with the ones over the Milvio bridge of Rome.

Some of them are expensive locks.  This seems to become a growing trend among adolescents and probably even among older ones who think that this is a romantic way to manifest their love.