"The Municipality is sleeping, we are not. Reduce hours and decibels, an unsustainable situation": the sit-in of residents exasperated by the movida

Milan, May 19, 2025 – Protest against the “noisy” nightlife in front of Palazzo Marino, the seat of the Municipality of Milan. The Committees against 'Mala Movida' are in action today, Monday May 19, and have organized a sit-in to present their requests to the administration. " Enough of Naviglio Luna Park" and "The Municipality sleeps, we don't": these are some of the slogans that were displayed on the banners carried in front of the Milanese town hall. Some of the representatives of the Lazzaretto, Arco della Pace, Nolo and Navigli committees were present, as well as the city councilor Mariangela Padalino of Noi Moderati . "We are asking for two things: to bring the noise back within the legal limits of 55 decibels with systematic monitoring, and then we believe, and the police chief of Milan has publicly declared it, that there is a common thread that connects the nightlife to crimes to urban security ", explained Maurice Spier of the Lazzaretto committee . “Movida is an indirect cause of predatory crimes and drug dealing.”

The sit-in in Piazza della Scala (photo Mianews)

As for possible solutions , Spier specified: “It is the body that decides what to do, we ask that the noise inside the nightlife areas be compatible with the limits of the law. What the Municipality decides is the responsibility of the Municipality, we are not the ones who determine what the remedies are, they are the ones who have to decide”. “Tomorrow is the deadline for comments on the new ordinance – he continued – but it is a deadline repeated from last year. Since the same initiative was made last year and the committees had filed comments that were absolutely not taken into consideration, we are symbolically returning them to the councilors, since the ordinance is already written, in order to raise awareness on this issue, because the real problem is that last year's ordinance did not work and does not work, and therefore by re-proposing it, the very purpose of the ordinance falls away”, that is, the “protection of people's right to rest”. A year later, “nothing has changed”, he underlined. "These are technical observations, not protests, because there are rules that are not respected. The ordinance does not protect these rights."

“The ordinance comes into force at 2 and only considers outdoor seating : this is proof that it is absolutely useless. There are many practical solutions, the first could be to place time limits on public places, not just outdoor seating,” he adds. “There is a fundamental point and this issue is delimited within the sentences that have condemned the administrations of other cities: there is a violation of a constitutional right in Article 32, which protects health, and Article 41, which clearly states that free private initiative must give way to the right to health. These are not just statements of principle but which are expressed in terms of sentences.” “In the Arco della Pace area , before Covid we had 600 seats on the sidewalks, after Covid due to the compensation decrees in favor of the venues there are 2,200. So they have almost quintupled,” said Franco Spirito , president of the Arco della Pace residents’ association.

“We contacted the Superintendency and they promised us in 2024 that they would call the Municipality to restore the landscape constraints that exist in that area, then there was an extension of the decrees until the end of 2025 and now we are waiting to know when this second extension expires what happens to all those places. There is not only the disturbance of the nightlife, we have the misfortune of having a very attractive, welcoming and spacious square which is the Piazza dell'Arco della Pace, which becomes a venue for any type of initiative and event” . “We ask the Municipality to find solutions to mend the livability and fun”, said the municipal councilor of Noi Moderati Mariangela Padalino. “ Movida was once a symbol of sociality, today it is truly creating many problems. There are people who sleep at night with 80 decibels, this can no longer be tolerated. And so we must activate serious and concrete tools: they have been lacking up to now, as has been the management of the territory. You cannot open 10 bars in 500 meters of street . So citizens ask for solutions, they give proposals and advice and in my opinion we must listen to them, because they are the ones who live the territory, and who better than them can give us proposals?”.

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