Tourists in Venice may no longer have to watch their step while admiring the city's monuments thanks to a new crack-down on dog mess littering the city's pavements.
In a bid to encourage owners to clear up after their pets the city will hand out 15,000 free 'pooper scoopers' with plastic bags attached, Venice city council said Friday.
Pet owners will be able to collect their dog dirt disposal kits from 100 highly visible distribution points that will be installed around the city in cooperation with its waste collection unit.
''It's a shared operation with animal associations that forms part of the real battle for city cleanliness that we have long been fighting,'' said Augusto Salvadori, the head of the city council's urban decorum and tourism department.
The council is waging another excrement war in St Mark's Square, where feeding the city's large pigeon population is on many tourists' must-do lists.
But the council regard the birds as a public health menace whose highly acidic droppings are eroding historic facades and statues.
Cleaning up the mess and damage caused by the pigeons costs each resident some 275 euros a year.
Like several other European cities, Venice has already banned people from feeding pigeons in all other parts of town and is now trying to cut a deal with bird seed vendors so that they will stop trading in the square.
Around 20 million tourists a year visit the lagoon city each year (the equivalent of almost 55,000 a day), bringing in cash but also stretching its infrastructure and resources to the limit.
Among his efforts to keep the city clean, in August last year Salvadori introduced squads of volunteer angels' who patrol tourist hotspots to curb slovenly behaviour by visitors.
Their mission is to prevent ''indecorous behaviour'' among tourists, which the city has decided includes sitting on the sidewalk, eating sandwiches there or going bare-chested.
The guardians, all aged between 24 and 30 and fluent in three languages, have the option of calling in a traffic warden, authorized to issue fines of 25 euros if rule-breakers refuse to mend their ways.
