One other summer season, one other vacationer vandalizing an historical website in Italy. A Kazakh vacationer was detained on the Archaeological Park of Pompeii on Saturday, June 22 after he was caught etching his identify onto a plaster wall in one of many metropolis’s well-known homes. In keeping with the Kazakh information company Kazinform, the unidentified vacationer was launched by Carabinieri (Italian legislation enforcement) after “finishing all the required formalities,” and might be pressured to pay for the restore of the damages he inflicted.
Becoming a member of different illicit carvings on the identical floor, the letters “ALI” had been scratched onto a wall contained in the Home of Ceii in Pompeii, which was excavated between 1913 and 1914 and sure belonged to the Justice of the Peace Lucius Ceius Secundus, in line with an electoral inscription painted on the façade. Ornately designed and full of colourful, illustrative frescoes, the Home of Ceii is taken into account one of many few remaining examples of residential structure from the late Samnite interval (2nd century BCE).
In a public assertion, Italian Minister of Tradition Gennaro Sangiuliano known as the act of vandalism to the Pompeiian residence “an uncivilized and idiotic shame brought on to our inventive and cultural heritage” and guaranteed that the offender can be obligated to pay for the repairs to the wall. Denouncing guests’ vandalism throughout the nation, he referenced an incident from earlier this month by which a Dutch vacationer tagged a wall within the historical metropolis of Herculaneum. Virtually precisely a yr in the past, a vacationer visiting from England scratched his and his girlfriend’s names onto a refurbished wall on the Roman Colosseum, inciting ire on a world stage.
Final yr, Sangiuliano proposed a legislation to drastically improve fines to those that harm or vandalize Italy’s preserved monuments and cultural heritage websites — a bit of laws some say was launched to dissuade local weather disaster activists from focusing on cultural websites throughout their public interventions. The movement handed in January of this yr.
Kazinform reported that the offender “is not going to be topic to prison prosecution” as further proceedings might be carried out administratively. Neither the Italian Ministry of Tradition nor the Archaeological Park of Pompeii instantly responded to Hyperallergic‘s request for remark relating to further penalties.
