A Tourist Damaged Florence’s ‘Fountain of Neptune’ While Attempting to Grope Its Marble Statue on a Dare
Fixing the fountain’s horse sculptures and frieze will cost nearly $6,000. The alleged offender is the latest tourist to harm artwork in response to peer pressure or in pursuit of social media clout
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A 28-year-old bachelorette visiting Florence damaged the Italian city’s 16th-century Fountain of Neptune—to the tune of nearly $6,000.
Located in Piazza della Signoria, in front of Palazzo Vecchio, the fountain was commissioned in 1559 by the Florentine Duke Cosimo I, also known as Cosimo de’ Medici, of Tuscany’s infamous Medici dynasty. The fountain’s centerpiece is a massive nude statue of Neptune, the Roman god of the sea. His nearly 14-foot white marble figure is surrounded by carved horses, nymphs and shells.
According to a statement from the city of Florence, on a Saturday afternoon in April, the woman climbed over the small metal fence surrounding the fountain. She aimed for Neptune, stepping on the legs of the horses to avoid the water.
“Her intention was to ‘touch’ the private parts of the statue for a sort of pre-wedding challenge,” according to the statement, per CNN’s Jack Guy.
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Nearby police officers removed the woman, but not before she caused “small but significant damage” to the horses’ legs and “to a frieze she had grabbed onto to avoid slipping,” per the statement. Repairs are estimated to cost €5,000 euros (about $5,875). The woman was reported to Florentine authorities for defacing an artistic and architectural monument, but she’s “to be presumed innocent until a final judgment by the Judicial Authority.”
The woman is only the latest tourist to attempt a heritage-damaging stunt in Italy. Giorgio Caselli, who leads the Florence city council’s fine arts office, tells the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida that climbing monuments for a “challenge” is becoming a trend among tourists.
“Perhaps because they don’t live in the city, they consider it more of a game,” Caselli says. “The physical contact that is sought with the monument is far from the objective, emotional and intellectual [awareness] that we expect and favor towards our monumental heritage.”
In recent years, Italy has dealt with a young man scratching “Ivan+Haley 23/6/23” onto the Colosseum; another carving his name into a plaster wall in Pompeii; and another damaging a portrait while attempting to take a selfie.
The latter happened last year in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. While attempting a humorous pose, the tourist stumbled backward into an oil painting of Tuscan prince Ferdinando de’ Medici created by Anton Domenico Gabbiani.
“Monuments are essentially seen as attractions—giant and surprising ‘permanent installations’ in a country that, for many, is nothing more than a playground,” art historian Giacomo Montanari, Genoa’s city councilor of culture, told Artnet’s Jo Lawson-Tancred in September.
The tourist who carved his and his girlfriend’s names into one of the Colosseum’s walls reportedly said he “didn’t know it was old,” Montanari told Artnet. “Incredible isn’t it?” the councilor said. “You come to Rome and pay to see the Colosseum, but you have no idea what era it belongs to, what it was, or who built it.”
Many tourists who end up vandalizing artworks share a motivation to snap unique photos to post on social media. With the rise of Instagram and other platforms, travelers are increasingly “visiting destinations primarily to take and share photos of themselves, often with iconic landmarks in the background,” as a UNESCO spokesperson told the Mirror’s Cyann Fielding in 2024. The UN agency dubbed the phenomenon “selfie tourism.”
“While people have always taken photos on vacation, the focus has shifted from capturing memories to creating shareable moments, often with the aim of garnering likes, followers and social media fame,” the spokesperson told the Mirror.
Selfie tourism can cause overcrowding and a general “degradation of the overall visitor experience.” And, as Italy and other countries have seen, literal destruction. Last summer, at the Palazzo Maffei museum in Verona, visitors broke a sculpture—a crystal-encrusted chair—while taking photos of each other pretending to sit on it.
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Florence is home to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as the Duomo, which was created starting in the late 13th century by several artists and architects, including sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio, painter Giotto and architect Filippo Brunelleschi.
Patrizia Asproni, an Italian expert in cultural management, told Artnet that she thinks authorities give visitors too much leeway because of their economic value. “In Italy, the tendency to view tourists as ‘untouchable’ because they bring money fuels this disrespect,” she said.
Florence gets about 16 million tourists a year, per the Guardian.
“Florentines are protective of their heritage,” Caselli tells the Guardian, which includes Renaissance masterpieces like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Michelangelo’s David and the recently damaged Fountain of Neptune. “Our goal must be to awaken and cure the civic sense of those who frequent the city, which is not only to show respect toward others, but also towards monuments.”
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