ROME (Reuters) - All roads are supposed to lead to Rome, but amorous young Italians anxious to escape mamma's beady eye might be tempted to take a detour to the country's first "Love Car Park."
The Tuscan town of Vinci, more commonly known for its Renaissance artist son Leonardo, is renovating a car park complete with soft lighting and special trash bins for condoms.
"We're just recognizing that young people love each other," Mayor Giancarlo Faenzi told Reuters by telephone on Monday.
"If you don't face that fact, you're simply closing your eyes to reality and you just end up sending them a kilometer (half a mile) down the road," he said, adding that the town was still deciding whether to install a condom machine.
The back seat often acts as a substitute bed for those Italians who live with their parents well into their 30s.
Even Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi famously reminisced last year about how "many of us first kissed our girl in a Fiat 500."
Italians talk of a "Car-ma Sutra," illustrating positions best suited to specific car models, though no one can ever remember the name of the book.
Car sex is not illegal in strongly Catholic Italy -- as long as the windows are covered up.
But woe betide anyone who is spotted in flagrante, whatever their age.
Last month an 85-year-old man and his 74-year-old lady friend were caught having sex in a car park next to a school and were given a two-month suspended sentence. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hmmm 85yo and 74yo. Better watch out they don't go at it too hard at their age, one of them may end up a "stiff".
