Italy begins dismantling private beach clubs as EU rules and local anger reshape its 7,500 km coastline

The demolition in Ostia

In early August, the beach at Ostia, Rome's traditional seaside escape, is unusually empty. At the 'Shilling', one of the best-known stabilimenti balneari in the town of 90,000, demolition crews are tearing down toilet blocks. The club was seized over building violations and other allegations against its operator, and winter storms left it so badly damaged it risked becoming a ruin. Next door, the 'Sporting Beach' is also being razed.

Rome's social-democratic mayor Roberto Gualtieri plans to replace them with a spiaggia libera, a free public beach. The city has already stripped another club, the 'Village', of its concession during a mafia investigation and handed it to a cooperative. The target is to expand Ostia's free shoreline from just 1.2 kilometres out of a total 11.3 kilometres to 6.5 kilometres, and to halve the number of concessions from 70 to 35.

A 20-year-old EU directive

Italy's coastline, like the rest of Europe's, is state property. By law, the shore must be freely and openly accessible to everyone. Yet more than half of the country's beaches are privately leased, often informally and at rock-bottom prices. The average annual concession fee is 8,200 euros, while the average turnover, calculated by the Centre for European Policy (CEP), is 260,000 euros. Other estimates put the figure far higher.

The push to reclaim the beaches is partly driven by a 2006 EU directive requiring that state concessions for beach sections be regularly put out to tender because the land is public. After two decades of slow implementation, Italian authorities are now beginning to act.

The cost of a day at the sea

Officially, Italy has more than 7,300 stabilimenti balneari; the real number is likely several thousand higher. Most are family-run businesses, though the term 'family' is interpreted loosely and organised crime is involved in some areas. This season, the average rental price for two loungers and an umbrella is around 40 euros per day, with some regions such as Tuscany charging considerably more.

A normal family can no longer afford this at all.

The Roman mother of two had come to Ostia with her children. Foreign tourists are frequently irritated by the lounger fees, and Italians, long accustomed to the system, are increasingly fed up. In Naples, activists recently occupied paid areas with their own towels and umbrellas. In many places, high fences and walls erected by the stabilimenti block access to the sea entirely.

A wider crackdown

Ostia is not alone. Mayors along the Italian Riviera in Liguria and in the southern region of Apulia have also begun making beaches free again. The shift marks a break with a decades-old Italian tradition and pits local authorities against operators who have grown wealthy from the concession system. The demolition of the 'Shilling' and the 'Sporting Beach' is the most visible sign yet that the old model is being dismantled.