Cronache di Borg'unto. Turismo, street food e decoro urbano

An area in the center of Florence has been named Borg’unto (Greasy Village) by residents, to emphasize the effects (the grease – “unto”) of a tourist practice that is concentrated there: “eating in the street”. A practice that is considered “indecorous”, not in itself but for the conditions in which it takes place and for the residues, the figure of the grease, that it leaves behind. The adoption of a specific toponym marks the perception of a “difference” within the urban space, which is qualified in dysphoric terms precisely because of this practice that negatively opposes a system of expectations that implicitly govern the definition of the “correct ways” of being a tourist in a place characterized, par excellence, as a “spiritual” space of “high” culture (the UNESCO area around Piazza della Signoria). The article proposes an ethnosemiotics study, which combines an analysis of the theme of indecorousness as it emerges from articles in the local press, and a participant observation conducted in the space that hosts the “incriminated” practices.