Residents run out of patience with Rome's mayor Ignazio Marino

Pigs root through garbage piling up in a working-class neighbourhood. City buses improvise routes on streets clogged with triple-parked cars. On rainy days, muck-choked sewers make crossing roads a Herculean labour.

Ignazio Marino promised to bring order to Rome's chaos when he was elected mayor in a landslide last year. Instead, critics say the liver transplant surgeon is an affliction not the cure and are pressuring him to resign.

The biggest challenge Marino faced was tackling Rome's notorious traffic gridlock. His first major move? Banning cars on the boulevard flanking the Roman Forum so tourists have a more pleasant stroll, strangling the city centre even more. The ban enraged residents and shopkeepers, whose streets became bottlenecks of detoured traffic.

Then Marino raised parking fees, an unpopular move among Romans who have abandoned the capital's strike-prone mass transit system in droves.

But what has really poisoned the mood is that after enforcing his big idea on parking fees, Marino repeatedly was caught in traffic violations, and allowed fines to pile up unpaid.

Even members of Marino's own Democratic Party worry that he could damage Premier Matteo Renzi, who heads the party. Marino's office turned down interview requests for this story.