After feasting your eyes on the wonders of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome what better way of rounding your experience than popping into the McDonald’s drive-thru next door for a burger and chips?
Plans have been scuppered after the Italian courts have ruled that the importance of protecting the city’s cultural heritage was more important than feeding someone’s burger habit. After all, there are 54 McDonald’s outlets in the city. Work, though, had started after the Ministry of Culture and the city council approved the project in 2016 but work came to a crashing halt when the then mayor, Virginia Raggi, intervened, causing the Ministry to make a U-turn. The courts upheld a previous ruling that the development should not go ahead.
The baths were built between 212 and 216CE and were at the time enormous, comfortably accommodating the six to eight thousand who visited it to avail themselves of its facilities every day.
It is good to see that McDonalds have been thrown to the lions.
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