The vandals have sacked Italy again this year.
Two German tourists spray painted slogans for a Munich soccer team onto the side of a 460-year-old landmark in Florence cops said — in the latest incident in which foreign troublemakers defaced an Italian cultural treasure.
The exterior of the stunning riverside Vasari Corridor — which connects to the city’s famous Uffizi Galleries — suffered $10,800 in damages from the graffiti attack, Italy’s Carabinieri military police said.
Police soon IDed the perpetrators as being among a group of 11 students staying at a local Airbnb — and took the vandalism so seriously that they raided the location and found two cans of black spray paint and paint-stained clothes. Two of the tourists were arrested.
Italy’s Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano demanded swift and immediate punishment for the vandals amid a growing wave of tourists defacing the nation’s historic architecture.
“Actions like these must not remain unpunished,’’ Sangiuliano said in a statement. “Now, let justice run its course.”
The 460-year-old Vasari Corridor was spray-painted with a reference to a Munich soccer club. ZUMAPRESS.com
Officials estimated the damages at $10,800, with the graffiti among the latest in a series of tourist vandalism. ZUMAPRESS.comUffizi director Eike Schmidt echoed the need to crack down on the vandalism, claiming that the use of spray paint was a step beyond previous incidents that involved carving words on stone using keys.
“Clearly this is not a drunken whim, but a premeditated act,’’ Schmidt said in a statement. “Enough with symbolic punishments and imaginative extenuating circumstances. We need the hard fist of the law.’’
Under Italian law, acts of vandalism can be convicted under “aggravated damage,” which carries a maximum sentence of three years.
Police have yet to say which of the 11 tourists have been identified as the vandals and formally charged with a crime.
The stunning riverside passageway connects to the famous Uffizi Galleries, in Florence. REDA&CO/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesThe defacing of the Vasari Corridor comes after two tourists were caught carving their names into the iconic Roman Colosseum.
In July, a 17-year-old Swiss girl was recorded carving the letter “N” into one of the landmark’s walls, just a month after Ivan Dimitrov, a 27-year-old Bulgarian-born fitness trainer, was arrested carving his and his fiancee’s name in the monument.
Dimitrov garnered a spate of ridicule online after he offered a bizarre apology where he claimed he did not know how old the Colosseum, completed by Emperor Titus in 80 AD, was when he committed the act.
