04/05/2026

On 2 May 2026, in the historic centre of Palermo, a horse-drawn tourist carriage was involved in an accident on Via Roma, near Piazza San Domenico. The incident was reported by a member of the public. Municipal Police, the Urban Rangers' Canine Unit, the Administrative Police and the Veterinary Service of the ASP all attended the scene. Inspections revealed irregularities in the carriage's documentation, resulting in the imposition of administrative sanctions. The horse was transferred to a suitable facility and placed under observation.

This is yet another episode in a structural problem that IHP has been denouncing for years — a chapter in a story that keeps repeating itself across Italy: horses forced to pull carriages through the chaos of urban traffic, among buses, scooters, outdoor café terraces and tourists. A context that has nothing to do with the ethological welfare of an animal whose nature — gregarious and highly sensitive — is the polar opposite of that kind of chronic, daily stress.

In 2026, using horses to pull carriages through a historic city centre is unacceptable. Horse-drawn carriages are not a tourist attraction: they are a system of exploitation that produces certifiable ethological suffering and poses concrete risks to public safety.

The political knot: incentives instead of bans

At the end of 2025, the Municipality of Palermo disbursed a financial incentive to carriage operators — simply for complying with the rules set by the Municipality itself, rules that are decidedly lax. A signal pointing in exactly the wrong direction. Today's fines do not undo that decision of yesterday. IHP calls on municipalities — in Palermo as in Rome, Florence, Pisa, Alghero and every other city that still permits this practice — to have the courage of genuine change: no more patchwork measures, but a clear political decision to remove animal-drawn carriages from urban streets. And it calls on the national legislature to amend the Highway Code to eliminate the regulatory basis that still allows it today.