An image shared on Twitter purportedly shows a massive protest in Trieste, Italy, against the country’s workplace COVID-19 health pass mandate.

ITALY: Massive protest in Italy’s northeastern city of #Trieste as dockers and other workers go on strike in huge numbers today to protest the nationwide vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com/iq9Kh5tupG

— Terence (@Terence20636573) October 15, 2021

Verdict: False

The image actually shows a crowd at a music festival in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2019.

Fact Check

The Italian government on Oct. 15 put into effect a requirement that public and private workers must have a “Green Pass” showing proof of COVID-19 vaccination, a recent negative COVID-19 test or recovery from the disease in order to enter their workplaces, the Associated Press reported. Workers who do not follow Italy’s new health pass rule face unpaid leave and fines of up to about $1,750, according to The New York Times.

Many Italians took to the streets to protest the mandate on Friday, Forbes reported. Amid those demonstrations, Twitter users shared an aerial photo of a massive crowd near a bridge and waterway, claiming it shows one such protest in the northeastern port city of Trieste. One tweet making the allegation has garnered over 6,000 likes to date.

“ITALY: TALY: Massive protest in Italy’s northeastern city of #Trieste as dockers and other workers go on strike in huge numbers today to protest the nationwide vaccine mandate,” reads another post sharing the photo. (RELATED: FACT CHECK: Does This Image Show A London Protest Against Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines?)

While there have been protests in Trieste against the “Green Pass” in recent days, the picture in question doesn’t depict that. In August of last year, the same photo was shared by Facebook users as supposedly showing a protest in Berlin against pandemic-related restrictions, a claim Check Your Fact debunked.

The photo shows a music festival called Street Parade that took place in Zurich back in August 2019. The picture can be found on the festival’s official website, and a spokesperson for Street Parade confirmed to Check Your Fact in August last year that it did indeed come from the 2019 festival. Some 850,000 people attended Street Parade that year, the festival’s website estimated.

Photos actually showing Italians protesting against the country’s “Green Pass” can be found in the coverage of various news outlets.