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The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
Italian guide collapses and dies while leading Colosseum tour in searing heat
Tour guides in Rome have repeated their calls for a rethink of the summer opening hours of some of the city's biggest attractions after one of their colleagues died of a suspected heart attack while showing a group around the Colosseum in baking heat. Giovanna Maria Giammarino, who was 56, collapsed in the amphitheatre at 6pm on Tuesday. Despite the efforts of tourists and the emergency services, she could not be revived and died at the scene. Her death came weeks after the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations warned that 'extreme heat is no longer an exception; it is a new reality that demands attention, adaptation, and solidarity within our profession'. As tributes and condolences poured in, Italy's Certified Tour Guide Association (AGTA) said Giammarino's death was proof of the physical toll that guiding takes on the body, and urged the authorities to extend the Colosseum's opening hours so tours could take place in the cool of the early morning or later in the evening. The Colosseum is open from 8.30am until 7.15pm from the end of March to the end of September. 'First of all, the opening hours of the Archaeological Park of the Colosseum [which includes the Colosseum, the Forum and the Palatine Hill] need to change during summer,' AGTA said in a statement posted on social media. 'It's useless to talk about a 'heat emergency' every year as if this were something new: climate change is a fact and for some years, working at the Roman Forum from 10:00 to 4:30pm has been unbearable.' The association said that from the beginning of June to 'at least the end of August', the opening hours of the Colosseum area should run from 7am to 8.15pm. 'For three years, we've been asking for the opening of the whole park to be brought forward to 7am and for closing to be postponed by an hour,' said AGTA. 'These changes would benefit the public health of everyone: visitors, guides and other workers.' The association said that paltry pensions and economic uncertainty had forced many of its members to push themselves and work at an unsustainable pace in order to be able to support their families. '[On Tuesday] a guide left for ever, but in recent years too many have left this activity for other 'safer' and less demanding jobs,' the statement added. 'We need more protection.' The Colosseum's authorities offered their condolences to Giammarino's family and said how much they had appreciated her 'professional dedication'. Italy's culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said her death 'powerfully underscores the human and professional value of those who, every day, contribute to the protection and preservation of our historical and artistic heritage'. In a gesture of respect and mourning, the Colosseum's lights were turned off at 9pm on Wednesday. Last month, Italy's national tour guide federation, Federagit, also requested that the opening of the Colosseum Archaeological Park be brought forward by an hour. Francesca Duimich, who represents 300 Roman tour guides, said dehydrated tourists often passed out in the summer heat of Rome. 'The forum is a pit; there is no shade, there is no wind,' Duimich told the Associated Press. 'Being there at 1pm or 2pm in the summer heat means you will feel unwell.'
The Independent
5 hours ago
- The Independent
Foxy Knoxy no more: How Monica Lewinsky and Amanda Knox teamed up to reclaim Knox's narrative
Monica Lewinsky is keenly aware of what it feels like when your name is no longer your own and becomes attached to a character conjured by others. An affair that she had with President Clinton nearly 30 years ago as a White House intern made her an international headline. So, when Lewinsky read that Amanda Knox, another woman whose image precedes her, wanted to adapt her memoir for the screen, she felt she was in a unique position to help. Knox was on a study abroad program in Italy in 2007 when one of her housemates, Meredith Kercher, was killed. She and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito quickly became the prime suspects. The story was a tabloid sensation and Knox was branded Foxy Knoxy. After a lengthy trial, she and Sollecito were convicted of Kercher's murder and sentenced to more than 20 years in prison; they were later acquitted and exonerated. Knox has already told her story in two memoirs and it's been dramatized by others. There was a Lifetime movie about the case and she believes the 2021 movie "Stillwater" starring Matt Damon was unfairly familiar. 'I have a story to tell because I have a mission, and my mission is to help people appreciate what really is going on when justice goes awry," Knox said about why she entrusted Lewinsky to help tell her story through 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox." 'This woman, who has gone through her own version of hell where the world had diminished her to a punchline inspired me to feel like maybe there was a path forward in my life," Knox said. The limited series is now streaming on Hulu. Grace Van Patten ("Tell Me Lies") stars and both Knox and Lewinsky are among its executive producers. Shared but different trauma Lewinsky was not always in a place to help others reclaim their narrative because her own was too much to bear. She remembers vaguely hearing about Knox's case but didn't have the energy to give it attention. 'I was allergic to cases like this,' Lewinsky said. 'I had just come out of graduate school at the end of 2006. And 2007 was a very challenging year for me.' She believed graduate school would lead to a new beginning and desired to 'have a new identity and go get a job like a normal person.' She said the realization that wasn't going to happen 'was a pretty devastating moment." In 2014, Lewinsky wrote a personal essay for Vanity Fair and became one of its contributors. She went on to produce a documentary and give a TedTalk called 'The Price of Shame,' addressing cyber-bullying and public-shaming. Educating others provided Lewinsky with a purpose she had been looking for. 'With most everything I do, it feels really important to me that it moves a conversation forward somehow," said Lewinsky. She now hosts a podcast called 'Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky.' By the time they officially began working on 'Twisted Tale,' Lewinsky was in protective mode. The 52-year-old Lewinsky, 14 years older than Knox, wanted to shield her from painful moments. She recalled being particularly worried that Knox would be traumatized by reading the first script. 'It's someone else's interpretation. There's dramatic license,' explained Lewinsky, who said she can still 'have sensitivities' to reading something written about her. Instead, Knox was OK and Lewinsky learned they're 'triggered by different things.' She laughs about it now: 'Amanda's a lot more agreeable than me.' The interrogation was key Knox said a part of her story that she wanted to make sure the TV series got right was the interrogation scene. She still describes it as 'the worst experience of my life and a really defining moment in how this whole case went off the rails. 'I was interrogated for 53 hours over five days. We don't see that on screen," she said. Now an advocate for criminal justice reform, Knox hopes viewers are moved by the condensed version and recognize 'the emotional truth and the psychological truth of that scenario.' Knox said she was coerced into signing a confession that she did not understand because of the language barrier. She was not fluent in Italian and did not have a lawyer with her at the time. In that document, Knox wrongly accused a local bar owner of the murder, and she still has a slander conviction because of it. Knox's lawyers recently filed paperwork to appeal that decision. She believes interrogations should have more transparency 'because what happens behind closed doors results in coerced confessions from innocent people to this day. I really wanted to shed a light on that.' No villains in Knox's version Knox has returned to Italy three times since her release from prison. One of those times was to meet with the prosecutor of her case after years of correspondence. Showrunner-creator KJ Stenberg said she had to condense more than 400 pages of their writing back-and-forth for their reunion scene. That meeting ultimately became the framework for the series. 'The scope of this story isn't, 'Here's the bad thing that happened to Amanda, the end.' The scope of the story is Amanda's going back to Italy and to appreciate why she made that choice, we need to go back and revisit everything that leads up to it," said Knox. Viewers will also see others' perspectives, including Sollecito's, a prison chaplain and confidante, and Knox's mother. It also shows how the investigators and prosecutor reached the conclusion at the time that Knox and Sollecito were guilty. 'We did not want mustache-twirling villains," said Knox. "We wanted the audience to come away from the story thinking, 'I can relate to every single person in this perfect storm.' That, to me, was so, so important because I did not want to do the harm that had been done to me in the past.' 'It's showing all of these people who are going through the same situation and all truly believing they were doing the right thing," added Van Patten. Knox isn't presented as perfect either in the series. 'I wasn't interested in doing a hagiography of Amanda Knox, nor was Amanda,' said Steinberg. Knox's harsh return to life after prison Knox had a hard time adjusting to so-called 'real life' after she was acquitted and returned home to the United States. This is shown in 'Twisted Tale.' 'I couldn't interact like a normal person with other people," said Knox. 'I went back to school and there were students who were taking pictures of me in class and posting them to social media with really unkind commentary.' She said the stigma has become "a huge, like, life-defining problem for me to solve.' 'People don't think about the adjustments she had to go through to reinsert herself into normal life, which is still not normal,' said Van Patten. Knox said she's learned that there are positives and negatives to her unique situation. 'There are exoneree friends of mine who have been able to move on with a life and be around people who don't know about the worst experience of their life. That's kind of a blessing and a curse. You don't have to explain yourself all the time but it's a curse because then this thing that was so defining of who you are as a person is something that you maybe feel like you don't know if you should share." "In my case, I never had that choice." Knox is now a married mother of two and grateful that her life did not turn out the way that she feared it would while in prison, particularly that she would never have children. "I was 22 years old when I was given a 26-year prison sentence. I could do the math,' she said. 'So every single day when I am with my children, I am reminded that this might not have happened. I don't care if I'm exhausted and I'm overwhelmed, this is what life is all about.'
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Telegraph
Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, 21, adopts baby
Stranger Things actress Millie Bobby Brown, 21, has adopted a child with Jon Bon Jovi's son. The British star announced on social media that she and her husband Jake Bongiovi had adopted a 'sweet baby girl' and was 'beyond excited' to become a parent. Brown, who rose to fame playing Eleven in the series Stranger Things, married Bongiovi, the 23-year-old son of a rock star, at a ceremony in Italy last year. 'This summer, we welcomed our sweet baby girl through adoption,' Brown wrote in a post on Instagram. 'We are beyond excited to embark on this beautiful next chapter of parenthood in both peace and privacy. 'And then there were three. Love, Millie and Jake Bongiovi.' View this post on Instagram A post shared by Millie Bobby Brown (@milliebobbybrown) Brown told the Smartless podcast in March that she was looking forward to motherhood and wanted a 'big family'. 'My mum actually had her first child at 21, and my dad was 19. And you know, it's been my thing since before I met Jake,' she said. 'Since I was a baby… I wanted to be a mum just like the way my mum was to me. And my nan, my grandmother is, she was a huge part of my life. 'Jake knows how important it is to me and, of course, I want to focus on really establishing myself as an actor and as a producer, but I also find it's so important to start a family for me personally,' she continued. 'It's a huge thing. Jake was like, we cannot do that until we get married. So that was his thing.' On the Call Her Daddy podcast this year, Brown said she had told her husband she wanted to shave her hair off when she had her first child, suggesting it would be 'really liberating'. Brown and Bongiovi first started dating in 2021 and announced their engagement in April 2023. They announced their wedding last year on Instagram, posting photos with family and friends from the celebration at Villa Cetinale in Tuscany. 'Forever and always, your wife,' she wrote in the caption. Brown grew up in Bournemouth and moved to Florida with her family at age eight.
