Bacoli Mayor Bulldozes Mafia-Linked Beach Lidos
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- Legambiente calculated in a 2022 report that about 43% of Italy's sandy coastline is now occupied by roughly 30,000 private lidos, with Tuscany's Forte dei Marmi at 94% privatization and nearby Pietrasanta and Camaiore at 98.8% and 98.4% respectively
- Naples has 95% of its beach concessions privatized, with the surrounding Campania region at 70% and Gatteo a Mare on the Adriatic only recently gaining 1.4% free beach (about 10 metres of 700 metres of coast)
- Josi Gerardo Della Ragione, the 39-year-old mayor of Bacoli, has deployed bulldozers to demolish illegal warehouses on public beach land — in one incident council workers confronted a person wielding a chainsaw on the site
- Della Ragione says many lidos gained licenses through paying fines for unauthorized occupation, a process he calls 'legalised squatting,' with abusers historically securing beachfront through annual penalties later treated as legitimization
- The Pariante family, a Camorra clan, had closed public access to the beach at Villa Ferretti before the Italian Anti-Mafia Investigation Division seized the property in 1995; Bacoli restored public access in 2016, leasing the villa to the University of Naples Federico II
- Miseno beach in Bacoli has roughly 100,000 square metres given over to military lidos (navy, air force, army, coastguard, and Guardia di Finanza) charging just €3 per deck chair versus €7–10 at non-military lidos
Why it matters: Italy's privatized coast has reached saturation — 95% in Naples, up to 98.8% in parts of Tuscany — and the fight now bleeds into overtourism politics, anti-mafia enforcement, and military land use. Bacoli's bulldozer approach is a test case for whether local governments can claw back public sand from concessionaires, squatters, and even the Italian armed forces.
