*ROME'S FOUNTAINS AND TOURISTS*

ROME : Because summer is here. Already the warm weather has brought a menacing whiff of tourists behaving badly.

For months, stiff fines failed to stop a fountain-bathing fad in a city blessed with and born of flowing water.

On April 12, a man went skinny-dipping in the Trevi Fountain, resulting in a viral web video and a fine of 500 euros, or $530.

The same month, a 30-year-old Spaniard tourist waded into the fountain dressed in a long tunic, a German woman in her 60s took a morning dip. and two Danes received Euro 900 fines for-

Mistaking the Fountain of Two Seas at Rome's Piazza Venezia for a foot bath.

Then there was May. A 25-year old Danish woman, perhaps with ''La Dolce Vita'' visions of Anita Ekberg sloshing her head, took an evening swim in her nightgown.

And June. A 30 year-old Malaysian man bathed nude in Gian Lorenzo Bernini's baroque Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Navona and received Euro 450 fine.

''I was hot,'' he reportedly explained to the police.

The police apprehended a Czech artist washing a dirty rag in the Piazza del Popolo's  Fountains of the Lions. Soon after, they fined the British and Romanian parents of two children for allowing them to climb on the lions.

The ''New barbarians'' are some papers are calling the tourists, are not limited to Rome.

In Florence, officials have taken to hosing down the Duomo Cathedral and other sites to prevent loiterers from sitting and eating on the steps.

But it is Rome and its fountains that are in the eye of the selfie storm, prompting the city embattled   Mayor, Virginia Raggi, to issue an ordinance.