Italy, a quick naturist overview for my naked friends

Hi there!
In these first weeks since I became active on the Naktiv site, some of you have privately asked me news about italian naturism and where it is possible to live a naked life in my country. Summer is here almost and I guess some of you are looking for a good vacation. I thought it could be useful to answer some questions in this blog. I'm not an expert, though, neither am I a representative of any kind of organization, association or enterprise in the field, I'm just a old time naturist who likes travel, hiking, sea, hills and mountains.

Italy has a long tradition with naturism/nudism.
Many activists push forward the idea behind bodyfreedom in many different ways and associations in the decades have sprung up witnessing their effort and sometimes fighting each other, which didn't help the cause.
Many of them are pretty active online and on the Internet itself new nudist communities have grown, and small events are constantly organized especially in the summer. Some of those organizations are sometimes able to interact with local administrations and obtain temporary permissions for a beach, but the absolute majority of italian municipalities are hostile to nakedness in any form and any place and will not hesitate to prosecute the violators.

Much could be said about italian laws, but be aware that our code strongly prosecutes whoever engages in "indecency" whereas the courts have a long tradition of considering "indecent" practically whoever stays naked out of the few spots where it is legal to undress. One can also be prosecuted for being naked in his house if that could be seen from outsiders or passers-by.

Thanks to the activists and to some insipired entrapreneurs, there are a few small naturist resorts in some beautiful spots. They mean as much for italian nudism as they are few. Given the natural beauties of my country and the countless beaches available, it may come as a surprise to international naked tourists to discover that areas where nudism is legally accepted are just a handful.

Thats also a reason why those italian nudists who can afford it tend to go abroad in the summer (France, Spain, Croatia) to live their vacations at the fullest. We are talking about several hundred thousands people (some talk of half a million people). There are estimates about how much it costs to italian tourism this approach to nudism in terms of lost revenues, but authorities are rarely moved by those numbers. In one case, as far as I know, international pressure from russian touristic enterprises (russian are used to be naked under the sun) pushed a northern municipal administration to dedicate a beach to naked tourists. The risk was derouting the newly rich russian tourists to Croatia or France.

If you have friends in Italy, they can also address you to several beaches where – even if not legally sanctioned – it is traditionally possibile to stay naked. If you wanna hike naked in Italy, all you can do is to take part in some events organized by activists (mostly in the North West) for a very limited access to this kind of tourism.

Given the situation I cannot suggest any friends abroad to come to Italy if they focus their vacation on nudism. They can obbviously search for those few naturist resorts I talked about (Google can easily spot them for you), but please do not expect in my country to find the same freedom standards you may be used to enjoy while visiting the northern european countries. Instead, if you care about it and a way to do it, help your local nudist organization to write to italian authorities, or start an international petition and so forth. I think that pressure from abroad could be the only way to speed up a process of opening up that has proceeded very slowly, very, in the last decades.