In a small tailor shop in Prati, a plush Rome neighbourhood close to Vatican City, Francesca Carmen sighs as she looks up from her sewing machine towards the unsightly scene from across the street. “I have to deal with this all the time,” she said. “I arrive in the morning to seagulls ripping through the rubbish bags, looking for food thrown away by restaurants overnight.”

Overflowing bins are currently as ubiquitous across the Italian capital as engine-revving, pollution-generating motor scooters, another scourge of Carmen’s working day: “Look at the way they’re parked – the exhaust pipes directly face the shop; during the summer I’m forced to keep the door closed to avoid breathing in the fumes.”

For years Romans have lamented their city’s crumbling infrastructure and chaotic services – from the uncollected rubbish, potholes, rat infestations and scrappy parks to buses that either never come or ageing ones that occasionally catch fire. But rancour has mounted since Virginia Raggi, from the anti-establishment Five Star Movement , was elected mayor in June 2016 on a promise to solve all the deeply entrenched issues and make the city, once envied for its dolce vita, “livable” again.

The extent of the decline is continuously chronicled on social media, with residents sharing images of graffiti, abandoned refrigerators and – as storms continue to cause death and destruction across Italy – felled trees (some 300 collapsed last week). Although located about 30km from the coast, in recent years the seagull population has increased as the birds prey on rubbish piled in the historical centre, while wild boars have been filmed rummaging through waste in areas beyond. Carmen is convinced that the city’s woes have worsened since Raggi took office, and fully supported the thousands who protested outside city hall under the slogan Roma Dice Basta, or Rome Says Enough.

Mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi attends a ceremony in memory of Desiree Mariottini, the teenager murdered in San Lorenzo. Photograph: Alessandro Serrano’/Rex

But farther along the street in Prati, an otherwise well-groomed neighbourhood teeming with smart restaurants and boutiques, Fabrizio Rastelli, a cobbler, begs to differ. “Rome has always been this way, I don’t see it as being any worse,” he said. “You kind of get used to seeing the rubbish, but one thing I would definitely say is that public transport is crap.”

Their conflicting views reflect the contrasts of a city whose richly layered history and complex infrastructure, on the one hand, make it challenging to manage, but where progress has been hindered by decades of inefficiency and corruption.

By the time Raggi took office, the city of 2.8 million people was saddled with some €13bn (£11.4bn) of debt due to corruption and wasteful expenditure.

“On top of this, we arrived during a time of austerity,” Luca Bergamo, Rome’s deputy mayor, told the Observer. “If you look back to the early 1990s, the city had similar problems, but in that period the financial economy around the world was on the rise and the very notion of getting into debt in order to develop infrastructure was not seen as a disaster. But over the years the attitude towards indebtedness moved from being of general good to corruption.”

Bergamo is referring to the era when the administration was presided over by Gianni Alemanno, a centre-right politician, which ended with dozens of officials and businessmen being convicted of fraud after millions of euros intended for public services lined their pockets instead. The swindling affected key services, including waste collection, the upkeep of parks and refugee reception centres, for years. Similar charges against Alemanno were dropped in 2017. The revelations only came to light during the tenure of his successor Ignazio Marino, an unpopular mayor and former surgeon from the centre-left Democratic party, whose resignation in late 2015 was triggered by the scandal as well as accusations (later dropped) that he had fiddled his expenses.

Eyeing early elections, Raggi was among those who helped to bring about his downfall, launching attacks on social media in line with Five Star’s founding policy of weeding out any form of political wrongdoing. But her position is also now under threat ahead of a court ruling that could see her forced to resign if convicted of cronyism.

Bergamo insists Raggi won’t quit and will remain until the next mayoral election in 2021. Nevertheless Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right League, which governs alongside Five Star, has seized on the potential conviction, the degradation – and the recent murder of 16-year-old Desiree Mariottini in the San Lorenzo area. Salvini is making the case for his party restoring “law and order” to the city should an early election arise, and has organised a rally on 8 December to drum up support.

Against Salvini’s strongman image, Raggi’s response to the city’s various problems have left her looking weak. Rather than suggesting solutions, she criticised the protesters as mostly consisting of “people from the Democratic party with designer handbags and poodles”. In reaction to security concerns in San Lorenzo, she pledged to ban alcohol sales after 9pm.

It is true that the outcome of the corruption investigations led to more bureaucracy and rules, making it more difficult for the administration to get anything done, and with limited resources. Atac, the municipally owned company that manages the city’s public transport, is in huge debt, leaving it incapable of running the system efficiently. Poor maintenance was also blamed for the sudden collapse of an escalator at a Rome metro station in October, injuring dozens of football fans.

Meanwhile, persistent strikes at Ama, the company in charge of waste disposal, are also to blame for the litter-strewn streets. Raggi had reason to complain about the lack of support from the state after it was revealed that the 2019 budget allocated just €37m to fix the city’s potholes rather than the required €250m.

But whether or not Raggi’s days are numbered, many residents argue that the city’s renewal must begin with the citizens themselves.

“There is a lack of civic pride,” said Giovanna, who runs a bookstand in the Campo de’ Fiori area. “I see immaculately dressed people dropping rubbish, there is no respect any more.”

Mirta Lancelloti, who lives in Flaminio, a neighbourhood in the north of the city, clears litter from the squares in the area herself. A supporter of Raggi, she sympathises with the mayor and the challenges she has in leading such a complex city, but agrees that residents must take responsibility. “If we don’t do anything to help, then things will stay the same – we can’t always just blame others,” she said.