On a sweltering summer day, a train bound for the Kent coast becomes a tableau of exposed flesh. A resident of Folkestone, Helen Coffey, describes cowering in a corner as fellow passengers—men brazenly topless, women in string bikinis that leave little to the imagination—press against her in the cramped carriage. The journey, she writes, is a “disturbing reality” of a British heatwave, where the boundary between beach and public transport dissolves. It is this scene that leads her to applaud a small Italian fishing village’s recent decision to fine such displays.

That village is Varenna, a 650-resident hamlet on Lake Como that can see up to 17,500 daily visitors in high season. Its new ordinance, in force since early summer, imposes fines of €50 to €200 for walking through the town bare-chested or in swimwear. Tour groups are capped at 25 people, and guides are forbidden from using loudspeakers; repeat offenders risk suspension of their activity for up to a year. Mayor Mauro Manzoni told Italian media that residents’ quality of life “cannot be sacrificed on the altar of mass tourism.” Local shopkeepers, according to reports, have largely welcomed the rules, insisting that while anything goes on the beach, the piazza and the streets demand a different standard.

Varenna is not an outlier. Across Italy, municipal authorities are drawing lines in the sand—sometimes literally. In Sorrent, a stroll in swimwear can cost up to €500; in Venice, fines for a bare torso reach €350. Portofino has created “no-waiting zones” and banned selfie stops in certain spots to keep foot traffic moving. On Sardinia, the Spiaggia della Pelosa requires beachgoers to place a mat under their towel to prevent sand from sticking, and the pink sands of Spiaggia Rosa are entirely off-limits, with fines of up to €3,500 for removing even a handful. In Eraclea, near Venice, building a sandcastle can draw a €250 penalty. The debate extends to food: in Apulia, some private beach operators have pushed to ban picnics, complaining of “banquets” that generate litter and undercut bar sales. Regional president Antonio Decaro pushed back, declaring that “the sea is a common good and must not become a luxury,” and local regulations still permit visitors to bring their own meals, provided they use biodegradable utensils.

The Italian measures are part of a wider global renegotiation of public space in tourist destinations. In Japan, tattoos—historically linked to organised crime—are unwelcome at many beaches, and bathers may be asked to cover them or leave. Spain has banned smoking on some 600 beaches, while France fines violators €135. Australia’s Bondi Beach prohibits alcohol to curb antisocial behaviour. In California, holes dug in the sand at Del Mar must not exceed 60 centimetres, and burying people is forbidden. The Indian state of Goa requires photographers to obtain consent before taking pictures of beachgoers, with plainclothes officers monitoring compliance. Even the United Kingdom, under the Coastal Protection Act 1949, threatens fines of up to £1,000 for removing sand, shells, or pebbles—a law originally designed to prevent large-scale erosion but now occasionally invoked against souvenir hunters.

Back in Folkestone, Coffey’s train-carriage ordeal has crystallised into a call for similar rules in Britain. She proposes fines for a catalogue of heatwave sins: drinking while walking, public urination, and the general abandonment of “civilised behaviour” that seems to accompany a scorching day. Her list, half-satirical but rooted in genuine exasperation, echoes the sentiment heard from Lake Como to the Ligurian coast: that the right to enjoy a place does not extend to treating it as an extension of one’s private beach towel. As the summer sun beats down, the image of a sandcastle, now illegal in one Venetian province, stands as a small but telling monument to the tension between freedom and the fragile order of shared spaces.