Love Locks:
Along the railings of the Ponte Vecchio Bridge in the Italian City of Florence and especially in the middle around the statue of the Florentine sculptor, Cellini there are many padlocks secured to the railings .
This, I found out after visiting, is a lover’s tradition where by locking the padlock and throwing the key into the river they become eternally bonded.
This is an action where I would recommend extreme caution because it sounds dangerously impulsive to me; I think I would further recommend taking the precaution of keeping a spare somewhere in case I needed it later.
This might sound all rather lovely but apparently all of these love tokens do lots of damage to the bridge and thousands of padlocks need to be removed every year. To deter people there is a €50 penalty for those caught doing it and that is a much higher price than I would be prepared to pay for eternal bondage!
Actually, it may be that there is some truth in this tale because according to ‘Eurostat’ even though the divorce rate has doubled in the last five years Italy has one of the lowest rates in the European Union. Sweden has the highest and although I don’t know this for a fact I’m willing to bet that across all of Europe the Vatican State probably has the absolute lowest!
Have Bag, Will Travel 
We have a bridge here in Copenhagen, allso with theese padlocks of love.
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Hi,
What a different type of custom, but still I can see how it would eventually damage whatever they were attached to if too many people all did the same thing. Very intriguing. 🙂
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Thank You.
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How intriguing. Why do people always have to damage public property? I like this post, especially: “…that is a much higher price than I would be prepared to pay for eternal bondage.” Such a sense of humour!
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Thanks for the comment. To be fair to the lovers I don’t believe they consider this as doing damage and I doubt they are thinking straight at all at the time when they click the padlock shut and throw away the key!
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Nice photo for the “together” challenge. I wonder who started the tradition of the locks.
Sorry I can’t come over very often Andrew – I just can’t seem to catch up – but I’m never disappointed when I do.
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Thank you for the comment.
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I wanna go there and have my lock! But I have no one to share it with. LOL.
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Love this, strangely, this piece is echoed in Homeland, the hero returns and takes his daughter to see the padlock he put on a fence to seal his love with his wife, who was having an affair with his best friend while locked up by muslim fundamentalists!
No sould the Americans
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