World’s Noisiest City

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 March 1926, Page 11

World’s Noisiest City

The Rome correspondent of the Morning Post claims for that city the doubtful honour of the world’s noisiest town. Let him explain:— For compact, nerve-sliattering stridency there is nothing to beat it outside a night-shift boiler-yard. With the traffic it is mostly a case of “De’il tak the hindermost. ” Taxis and motors not only rasp their claxons and belch their horns as an ostinato furioso to the geenral discord both when moving and held up, but when they do move they let go their exhausts—each car making a noise like an Atlantic liner getting under way. So many undeserved and baseless criticisms are being hurled against Italy and the Italians these days that one hesitates to add even a true criticism of this minor nature, yet it would appear to the Northerner that no Italian feels that he is in a motor-car at all if it is not making a roar like a bombing biplane, be it day, night, or the early hours.

Then we h.ave here tram-cars that follow weird circuitous routes. At each of the innumerable curves of the rails the axies set up an carsplitting shriek. One area (where they are completing a new residential quarter) is favoured with a stream train of some 20 horsepower, 20 of which find an outlet through the whistle—a deafening advertisement of the amenities! Then there are also bevies of hard-.tired, long-distance ’buses that bolt through the cobbled streets like Brian Boru’s hammers o’ hell. )