Silly tourist caught signing 2,000-year-old Roman villa with marker

A Dutch tourist has been arrested and charged with vandalism after he was caught carving his name on an ancient Roman building near Pompeii.

The unnamed 27-year-old man was arrested after staff discovered graffiti on a frescoed wall at an ancient Roman villa in Herculaneum on Monday.

Police later said the graffiti, done in permanent black marker, matched the Dutch tourist’s signature.

Herculaneum, an ancient Roman seaside town near Naples, was also buried alongside its more famous neighbor Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

The tourist now faces charges of damage and defacement of artistic works, reports the Independent.

“Any damage harms our heritage, our beauty and our identity and that is why it must be punished with the utmost firmness,” Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said in a statement.

The incident happened on Sunday at the UNESCO world heritage site, which saw Italy’s museums and archaeological sites open free to the public to celebrate the national holiday of Festa della Repubblica.

It comes as Italian authorities seek to crack down on the desecration of their cultural heritage sites following a series of graffiti incidents on historic monuments in recent years.

In 2023, a 27-year-old Bulgarian fitness instructor living in the UK was found by Italian police after he was caught carving “Ivan + Hayley 23” into the walls of the Colosseum in Rome.

After being told he faced a €15,000 fine or five years in prison, the man wrote a bizarre letter of apology to Italian authorities in which he claimed not to know the Colosseum was a structure Ancient.

Sangiuliano responded to the incident again, after images of the Colosseum vandal went viral, calling it “very serious, undignified and a sign of great incivility that a tourist defaces one of the most famous places in the world, the Colosseum, to engrave”. the name of his fiancée.

“I hope that whoever did this will be identified and punished in accordance with our laws,” he added.

A Swiss teenager was also reprimanded after she was caught carving the letter ‘N’ into the ancient structure.

Two Germans were also arrested by police in 2023 after allegedly spray-painting “DKS 1860” – the name of a German third division football team – on the 460-year-old columns of the iconic Vasari Corridor of Florence.

In 2014, a Russian tourist was fined €20,000 (£17,000) and given a four-year suspended prison sentence for carving a “K” on a wall.

The following year, two American tourists were also cited for aggravated criminal damage after carving their names into the monument.

In response to these acts of vandalism, Italy introduced a new law this year that would impose fines of up to 40,000 euros on those found guilty of defacing monuments.

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