Tourists Wanted for Defacing Historic Italian Site With Soccer Slogans

Bad tourist summer continues in Italy.

Italian police are seeking two German tourists in their early 20s after vandals spray painted slogans for soccer team Munich 1860 on Florence’s Vasari Corridor. The Corridor, built in 1565, is a half-mile-long enclosed passageway which connects the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti.

The destruction took place just before dawn on Wednesday and was captured on CCTV. It shows two men, both clad in jeans and baseball caps. There is a third person tagging along behind them who appears to be a young child. Footage taken from a separate CCTV camera then shows the two men navigating in and out of the famed pillars. A daytime view displays their terrible work. Crudely stenciled black icons mar the historic structure.

Police have identified suspects after the Varsari Corridor in Florence was spray-painted.

Italian police were examining video to identify those responsible for the graffiti which they say has revealed two German tourist suspects

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— Sky News (@SkyNews) August 24, 2023

This is the latest bizarre episode in a summer of tourists rampaging through Italy. In June, a visitor from the U.K. carved his and a girlfriend’s name into the Roman Colosseum. Last month, a Swiss teenager did basically the same thing. Then, earlier in August, a woman was caught traipsing through the Trevi Fountain to refill her water bottle.

In April, Italy’s government passed laws raising the fines for those who vandalize artwork or cultural sites. They now range from €10,000 to €60,000. German art historian Eike Schmidt issued a statement calling for harsher punishments for vandals. He noted that in America, such crimes often result in prison sentences. 

“Clearly this is not a drunken whim, but a premeditated act,” he said of the most recent incident. “Enough with symbolic punishments and imaginative extenuating circumstances. We need the hard fist of the law.”