For the second time in less than a month, a tourist has been caught on video while vandalizing the Colosseum in Rome, Italy.
Italian tour guide David Battaglino recorded the tourist as she began to etch the letter “N” into a Colosseum wall on Friday. Battaglino reported the incident to site security, who then reported it to the Carabinieri of the Province of Rome, a division of Italy’s military police.
Authorities identified the tourist as a 17-year-old girl from Switzerland.
“It is the first time I have managed to film an act of vandalism at the Colosseum, but in six years, I have seen dozens,” he told Italian publication la Repubblica. “There are also those who rip off parts of the wall.”
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Battaglino told the teenager’s parents what she had done, and the parents told him, “She’s just a little girl, she wasn’t doing anything wrong,” according to la Repubblica.
On June 23, a British man was caught carving “Ivan+Hayley 23” into the Colosseum. He was later identified and wrote an apology letter expressing his “deepest embarrassment.”
Vandalizing the Colosseum carries fines that could approach $17,000 and up to five years in prison.
