Last Sunday, more than 10,000 people turned up at the Aviano NATO air base on the northeast coast of Italy to watch US, Canadian, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese fighters and bombers set off on raids over Yugoslavia.
It was a mild, sunny spring day and, as the planes came and went, families gathered at the air base to enjoy an afternoon picnic to the accompaniment of F-16 fighter jets, EA-6B Prowlers and Stealth F-117 Nighthawk bombers.
Despite police efforts to dissuade people from gathering close to the base, a 10-kilometre traffic jam built up at one point on Sunday afternoon. Even that failed to deter the curious and many simply abandoned their cars and headed for the hillsides around the base.
So strong was the attraction of "war-watching" that yesterday the Aviano local authorities closed the roads in and around the base to all but local residents and base employees, claiming that they were taking the action in the best interests of road safety.
We all know that ever since Vietnam war has become a media spectacle. The impact of the television camera on conflicts worldwide has radically reshaped public perception of war, while often influences the political resolution of a conflict. It is hardly surprising that families want to visit the NATO base they see on their TVs every day, converting their boring, routine Sunday drive into a sort of "I was there".
As parents lifted children on to their shoulders so they could better see the jets land and take off, it seems that few of them thought of the possible carnage the jets were about to provoke when they dropped their bombs over Yugoslavia.
"They watch the war with the same enthusiasm that people in Roman times probably had when they crowded into stadiums to watch the massacre of Christians," the exasperated deputy mayor of Aviano, Mr Valentino De Piante, told Italy Daily yesterday.
Ironically, the war tourists far outnumbered the pacifist groups which have set up protest headquarters outside the base. While some of the pacifists were on hunger strike, many of the war tourists applauded each take-off and landing.
Morbid curiosity is nothing new. At the same time that war tourists gathered at Aviano, French and Italian day-trippers were posing for family snapshots in front of the charred remains of cars and lorries which were involved in the horrific Mont Blanc tunnel disaster last week in which at least 45 people were burned to death. As families stood for a snapshot, a few hundred yards away smoke fuming from the tunnel.
However familiar the war tourists' morbid curiosity may be, it is still surprising that the people who travelled to Aviano on Sunday would appear to perceive the NATO raids on Yugoslavia as some sort of spectator sport rather than something which could directly and painfully involve them. After all, for one week now, every Italian newspaper, radio and TV channel has been at pains to point out just how close Italy and Italians are to the conflict.
Belgrade, we are reminded by maps every day, is just 450 miles from Rome, while the Puglia coastline is stocked with ground-to-air missile defences in acknowledgment that Belgrade is just a 15-minute fighter jet ride away. Those same maps also remind us that 10 NATO air bases on Italian soil are involved in the military operation.
Reprisal raids against the bases are "highly unlikely", according to NATO sources. Unless, that is, a Serb kamikaze pilot is willing to try to escape radar by flying almost at water level across the Adriatic and then fly his plane head first into a target.
No, the experts cheerfully conclude, terrorist activity by way of reprisals is much more likely. Thanks for the comforting thought, Mr Expert.
While war goes on, however, there are always those willing to make the best of the situation. Lotto booth operators reported over the weekend that the numbers 16 (as in F-16), 17 (as in F-117) and 40 (the number of kilometres between Belgrade and where the F117 was shot down) were much played (unsuccessfully).
Furthermore, in Naples, clandestine bookmakers will give you 60/1 against a Serb Scud missile penetrating NATO air cover and 150/1 against it striking a target. Nowt as strange as folk.