Rome is a magical city in Italy.  The streets are masked in the ambience of romance and history.  The restaurants smell of melted cheese and freshly made dough.  And the people have beautiful accents that are sure to make your heart melt.  And while Rome is definitely a wonderful city to visit, there are some things that tourists should be aware of before blindly expecting to experience the wonders of Rome without any of the less appealing aspects.

One thing to be weary of are the people that offer you gifts.  Mostly located in heavily touristy areas and near major landmarks, these people wait for the chance to bombard you with gifts.  Without your consent or invitation, often times these people will grab your arm and give you a “gift”. This gift is usually some sort of bracelet and these people will tell you that they are happy to give you this gift as a welcome statement to Italy.  However, if you accept the gift and start walking away, they stop you and start requesting a gift in return.  Usually this gift that they request is money and it can be very difficult to get away from these pesky people.  These gift givers typically have travelled to Rome from neighboring African countries and have mass immigrated to the area in order to participate in this scheme of gift giving.  They may approach you with compliments at first.  However, as you continually refuse their gifts, they can become increasingly argumentative and aggressive.  Usually these people are harmless even though they are extremely annoying.  However, sometimes they can get too close, grab you without consent, or follow you for a few blocks to make you uncomfortable.

These gift givers are just one of the things to be aware of when travelling to Rome.  SImilar schemes like this occur in many different popular cities across Europe as well.  However, it is very important to note the possibility of this occurring wherever you travel, even if it is not to an extremely touristy city.  In order to increase safety measures, maybe try to travel in groups of people or not to walk to closely to people who appear to be giving out a bunch of gifts to random tourists.