By Tim Binnall
In yet another case of a tourist behaving badly in Italy, a young man from Germany damaged an iconic 16th-century statue in the city of Florence when he climbed onto the piece in order to take a selfie. The unfortunate incident reportedly occurred earlier early Monday morning at the famed Fountain of Neptune, which depicts the Roman god of the sea standing atop a chariot. The centuries-old work is a popular destination for tourists who often commemorate their visit with a photo in front of the monument. In this particular instance, however, the unnamed visitor took his tour of Florence too far when he scrambled past a security barrier and actually climbed the statue for a selfie.
Despite pulling off the stunt in the middle of the night, the 22-year-old man's misadventure was unsurprisingly caught on video by security cameras. A subsequent examination of the monument found that the young man not only scarred the statue as he climbed it, but also broke a piece off during his descent. All told, authorities say that ill-advised selfie caused around $5,400 in damages. Although he managed to flee the scene before cops could arrive, police were able to quickly track down the tourist as he has been taken into custody and will undoubtedly be hit with a sizeable fine for the once-in-a-lifetime photo.
The young man's antics were decried by the mayor of Florence, who declared that "there is no justification for ignorance and vandalism towards cultural heritage" and an art expert in the city aptly dubbed the tourist an "imbecile." This week's case in Florence is the latest in what has been a rather bizarre series of recent incidents wherein people visiting Italy have been busted for increasingly brazen acts of misbehavior and vandalism, including a tourist who carved his name into the Roman Colosseum, a man who drove his rental car down the Spanish Steps, and an irate individual who smashed sculptures at the Vatican. Why these odd events keep occurring is something of a mystery, but one imagines that officials in Italy are happy to see this year's tourist season winding down.