ROME — No sooner had workers hoisted a 72-foot tall Norway spruce in Rome’s central Piazza Venezia this month than the mocking began. 
 
 The tree was quickly nicknamed Spelacchio, or Mangy, because so many of its dead needles were dropping off, leaving the tree looking a bit bare. Chatter spread quickly on social media where Romans traded jokes about the spruce and criticized its sad appearance. 
 
 Insults quickly turned to intrigue as the Italian media plumbed the tree’s costs, questioned how it had been transported to the city and analyzed its state of health. 
 
 “It has clearly been traumatized,” one expert declared. 
 
 A consumer rights group asked an administrative court, which has oversight over government spending, to investigate what it described as a “shameful spectacle for citizens and tourists” and demanded that the tree be removed immediately. ||||| ROME — If the paragon of all Christmas trees is the one in front of the Rockefeller Center in New York — first erected, mind you, by an Italian in 1931 — the prize for most pitiful must go to the one that stands in Rome’s Piazza Venezia this year. Just days after it was put up, it began to gray and shed its needles, and soon it had become nearly see-through. The tree cuts so sad and forlorn a figure that it has been nicknamed Spelacchio, or Mangy. 
 
 Spelacchio arrived in Rome early this month from the Trentino region, near Italy’s border with Austria, and what with transport expenses and decorations, the 70-foot fir is estimated to have cost Italian taxpayers 48,000 euros, or $57,000. It’s not clear what has ailed it. Maybe Spelacchio was unsettled by the trip; perhaps it was ill on departure. By way of explanation, Antimo Palumbo, a tree historian who was standing by Spelacchio’s side on Friday morning, pointed at the concrete all over its roots. “You see that?” he told me. “They decided to pour the concrete to keep it steady, but that killed it instead.” 
 
 There isn’t enough time, money or political will to replace the tree, and so Spelacchio the Mangy will stay in Piazza Venezia through the holidays, and for many locals it has already become a metaphor for what’s wrong with the city, and the country. 
 
 Traffic in Rome is chronically congested, public transport is inefficient, trash collection is slow and sporadic. Early hopes about Virginia Raggi, who was elected mayor last year on an anti-establishment agenda, promptly faded amid familiar allegations of corruption and nepotism. ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 ROME — Rome's Spanish Steps are set to be unveiled to much fanfare Thursday after a year-long refurbishment that returned the stairway to its original splendor. 
 
 Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in 1953 film "Roman Holiday." Courtesy Everett Collection 
 
 But one of the main figures paying for the $1.7 million project is ruffling feathers by suggesting officials keep "barbarians" from getting too close to the iconic tourist site. 
 
 Built in 1725, the stairway was immortalized by Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in the movie "Roman Holiday." 
 
 Millions of people have sat on them to eat, drink and smoke while canoodling and enjoying the view over Via Condotti, the Italian capital's most exclusive fashion street. But that left behind a coating of filth that slowly darkened the once shiny marble. 
 
 Paolo Bulgari, the chairman of the luxury jewelry house and nephew of its founder, wants to make sure that doesn't happen again. 
 
 "Restorers have done a great and difficult job. The steps were coated with anything from coffee, wine, chewing gum," he told the Italian daily La Repubblica earlier this month. 
 
 "But now I am worried. If we don't set strict rules, the steps will go back to being used as a camping site for barbarians," the billionaire reportedly said, adding that a gate or a Plexiglas barrier "doesn't seem like an impossible task." 
 
 Rome's Fontana della Barcaccia and the Spanish Steps. Steve Brown/REX / Rex Features via AP file 
 
 What Bulgari says matters because his company paid for the restoration as part of a government tax break plan. He has also suggested erecting a fence to prevent people from hanging around on the tourist hot spot at night. 
 
 A temporary fence erected during the restoration prevents people from walking up and down the Spanish Steps until the official reopening, which was rescheduled from Wednesday to Thursday due to poor weather. 
 
 “ At night the steps are often full of drunks and people partying” 
 
 Italy's Culture Ministry declined to comment on whether a more permanent barrier would replace it, saying it would answer questions at this week's event. 
 
 Tourists visiting the site told NBC News they understood Bulgari's worries but disagreed with his solution. 
 
 "He calls them barbarians, I call them slobs," Lynn Godfrey, 73, from New Jersey. "You wouldn't litter your house floor with food, why would you do that in such a beautiful place?" 
 
 She added: "They should just add more guards and signs telling people it's prohibited to drink and eat on the steps." 
 
 Lynn Godfrey, left, stands in front of the Spanish Steps with a friend. Claudio Lavanga / NBC News 
 
 Mario, a local policeman who has patrolled the monument for years, agreed a fence was unnecessary. 
 
 "It's true, at night the steps are often full of drunks and people partying, but we only guard the monument until midnight, and then come back at 7 a.m.," he said. "We should have overnight guards, [surveillance cameras] and signs warning people that they shouldn't drink or eat on the steps." 
 
 Another tourist, Tom Dabrowski, 63, also from New Jersey, told NBC News: "They are steps, at the end of the day, and they should be used as such at all times — even at night. It's part of the experience." 
 
 Bulgari's idea was also met with skepticism within the company itself. 
 
 "As with every monument there is always the risk of vandalism and lack of respect," Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin told Italian media after its chairman's proposal. "I have faith that the local administration will be able to preserve the stairway after the restoration." 
 
 A fence blocks access to the Spanish Steps in Rome on Tuesday. Annette Reuther / DPA via AP 
 
 The Spanish Steps are only the latest restoration of Rome's monuments and landmarks funded by Italy's famous fashion houses in exchange for tax breaks. 
 
 Luxury shoemaker Tod's paid 25 million euros ($28 million) for the five-year cleanup of the Colosseum's exterior facade, which had been blackened by decades of pollution. Until recently, cars drove around the monument like a glorified intersection. 
 
 Fashion house Fendi paid 2 million euro ($2.2 million) for the cleaning and restoration of the Trevi Fountain as well as three others in the city. ||||| FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2007 file photo a view on the chestnut tree is seen which comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II, and the attic window in the secret annex at the... (Associated Press) 
 
 The monumental chestnut tree that cheered Anne Frank while she was in hiding from the Nazis was toppled by wind and heavy rain on Monday. 
 
 The once mighty tree, now diseased and rotted through the trunk, snapped about 3 feet (1 meter) above ground and crashed across several gardens. It damaged a brick wall and several sheds, but nearby buildings _ including the Anne Frank House museum _ escaped unscathed. No one was injured, a museum spokeswoman said. 
 
 "Someone yelled, 'It's falling. The tree is falling,' and then you heard it go down," said museum spokeswoman Maatje Mostart. "Luckily no one was hurt." 
 
 A global campaign to save the chestnut, widely known as The Anne Frank Tree, was launched in 2007 after city officials deemed it a safety hazard and ordered it felled. The tree was granted a last-minute reprieve after a battle in court. 
 
 The 150-year-old tree suffered from fungus and moths that had caused more than half its trunk to rot. 
 
 Two years ago city workmen encased the trunk in a steel support system to prevent it from falling, but that failed under windy weather Monday. 
 
 The Netherlands' Trees Institute, one of the most prominent supporters of the preservation project, said it was "unpleasantly surprised" by the news of the tree's fall early Monday afternoon. 
 
 "On the advice of experts in tree care, it had been calculated that the tree could live several more decades" with the support structure, the institute said in a statement. 
 
 "Alas, in the event it seems that nature is stronger." 
 
 The institute said it didn't know why the support structure had failed. 
 
 Many clones of the tree have been taken, including 11 planted at sites around the United States and 150 at a park in Amsterdam. It is not clear whether a new tree will replace the original one on the same spot, since it rests on property belonging to a neighbor. 
 
 The Jewish teenager made several references to the tree in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until her family was arrested in August 1944. 
 
 "Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind." 
 
 She also wrote: "As long as this exists, ... and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies _ while this lasts I cannot be unhappy." 
 
 Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945. Her diary was recovered and published after her death. It has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.
– Rome wasn't built in a day, but it looks like its Christmas tree may have been. The "toilet brush" of a tree now standing in one of the city's busiest public squares and being roundly mocked in Italy and around the world makes Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look lush by comparison. The New York Times reports that the 72-foot-tall Norway spruce erected in the Piazza Venezia and nicknamed "Spelacchio," or "Mangy," will cost the city about $57,000 in all—and locals are outraged that so much money was outlayed for a tree that one expert says "has clearly been traumatized." Thrillist documents some of the online reaction to the sad, needle-sparse spruce, which it calls a "balding network of pines and brittle branches." "Maybe the dogs drank all the water in the tree stand?" one amused viewer tweeted, while another offered a backhanded compliment: "Big fan of Rome's Christmas tree for looking how we all feel." Others defend the tree, saying it looks OK when it's lit up at night. "We are all Spelacchio!" one supporter told a local paper. Per the Times, the tree even has a few Facebook accounts and a Twitter handle in its name, with one tweet proclaiming: "I have more followers than branches." A consumer rights group that calls the tree a "shameful spectacle for citizens and tourists" is lobbying to have the tree taken down and has asked a local court to scrutinize the tree's costs. Rome's mayor says her office is also looking into TreeGate.