Rome: a difficult path between tourist pressure and sustainable development

Tourism is considered to be an effective policy for urban development and for re-launching areas in industrial decline. The increase in the number of tourists is often considered to be a sort of indicator of success of a certain policy. This is not always and necessarily true. The growth of the number of visitors cannot be considered to be positive in se, without taking into account the quality of the tourist experience and the visitor yield. Tourist presence can contribute to the improvement of economic and social conditions of some of the residents but il can also provoke the increase of environmental stresses. If the negative effects exceed the advantages, historic centres suffer of an alteration of their environmental, economic and social structure. The paper takes into account those internal contradictions of urban tourism in the case of Rome. Results are based on interviews with the main “stakeholders” and “shareholders” of the tourist activities.