Movida damage, Milan City Council must compensate residents of the Lazzaretto-Melzo district

Damages from movida in the Lazzaretto-Melzo district in Milan. With a maxi fine totalling 250,000 euro to be paid to residents, including interest, the ruling of the Court of Milan 9566/2025 is in line with the previous ones of Turin, Como, Naples and condemns the municipality to intervene. "The so-called movida,' it reads, 'entailed the depreciation of real estate units, damage to buildings in the neighbourhood and to parked cars, as well as a general situation of degradation and insecurity, as repeatedly reported to the municipality, without, however, receiving any response.

In detail, the acoustic classification plan assigned some of the neighbourhood's blocks to class IV with an absolute noise emission limit of 55 decibels that was largely exceeded at night.

The residents therefore invoked their constitutional rights: to health (Article 32), the inviolability of the home, the enjoyment of property, invoking Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Moreover, they quoted the guidelines on night noise published by the World Health Organisation, which set 40 decibels as the threshold to be respected during the hours set aside for sleep, adding that, in any case, not even for short periods, 55 decibels may be exceeded. In some Milanese streets, the court-appointed technical consultancy had found peaks of 73.5 decibels.

The municipality," reads the ruling of 11 December, "is obliged, like any landowner, to comply with Article 844 of the Civil Code, which prohibits noise immissions into neighbouring properties that exceed normal tolerability, so it was ordered to put an end to the disturbing noise immissions. That the residents' right to rest, sleep, the peaceful conduct of normal activities, and the enjoyment of their home and neighbourhood habitat had been impaired required no particular demonstration. Noises of the magnitude of those found, the judges wrote, 'prevent sleep, generating a situation of chronic fatigue that jeopardises work, the tasks imposed by daily life, leisure and social relations'.

On the basis of this, the damage suffered by each resident €50 per night, to be multiplied by five evenings per week starting from 2016, with six months' deduction coinciding with the duration of the total lockdown due to Covid, plus interest and monetary revaluation totalling €4,700 per resident, plus interest, was quantified equitably. A sum of money was also fixed for any delay in the execution of the measure, while the municipality prepares the appeal.