At the time the bikini was banned from beaches and public places on the French Atlantic coastline, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
An old image of what appeared to be a police officer giving a citation to a lady wearing a bikini on a beach reappeared online in September 2021. One well-liked Reddit post provided the following description of the image:
A police officer issuing a woman a citation in the 1950s for breaking the law by donning a bikini on a beach in Italy.
The image and accounts of the scene have been shared online numerous times in recent years. Given that those descriptions were accurate, we are giving them the grade "True."
The image was captured in September 1957 on a beach in Rimini, northern Italy.
It is kept at the German company Axel Springer Syndicate's Ullstein photo archive. Ullstein informed Snopes that information regarding the photographer who photographed the scene was unavailable.
Bikinis were indeed prohibited from beaches in Italy in the 1950s after the Vatican voiced its opposition to the swimsuit, which was first marketed in 1946, even though we were unable to locate the precise dates in question.