The Gouged-Out Testicles of This Bull Mosaic in Italy Are Just Two More Victims of Tourists Abusing Monuments for Luck

It’s common for visitors to touch intimate areas portrayed in artworks, but the phenomenon puts cultural icons at risk

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

June 1, 2026 3:31 p.m.

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For decades, visitors to Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II have been gouging into one particular spot on one particular floor mosaic. The tiles depict a rearing bull, and superstition says if someone plants their heel on the beast’s testicles and turns three times, they’ll return to Milan.

“It’s probably a charming gesture, but also quite damaging for a work of art,” craftsman Gianluca Galli, who recently repaired the mosaic, tells Agence France-Presse’s Taimaz Szirniks.

After years of abuse, the bull’s testicles disappeared, leaving a dark crater in the mosaic. The city recently commissioned its restoration—for the second time in a decade. Galli filled the hole and replaced the lost tiles, and visitors to the 19th-century shopping center are now free to walk on it again. But some observers are disappointed, saying the bull was fixed in more ways than one.

“Something’s missing,” commented one person on city councilor Marco Granelli’s Facebook post about the restored mosaic, per the Guardian’s Angela Giuffrida. Another wrote, “What happened to the testicles?”

Indeed, the bull’s groin is now a smooth pink, lacking the distinctly outlined, dark pink testicles it once sported. As the Guardian reports, some Facebook users asked whether the bull had been visually castrated to deter tourists from damaging it with their heels—and questioned the value of the reportedly $35,000 restoration.

The bull mosaic is an homage to the city of Turin. It’s one of four such designs in the tiled floor of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, along with symbols of Rome, Florence and Milan. Why did tourists begin spinning their heels on it for good luck? Unknown. But the practice caught on, and the bull joined a global roster of monuments that are regularly rubbed, kissed and abused.

A bust of President Abraham Lincoln, at his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, has a polished nose because people are always rubbing it for good luck. Same goes for the toes of philosopher David Hume’s statue in Edinburgh. And the belly of the “Fat Policeman” in Budapest. And the snout of a bronze boar in Florence.

Statue rubbing—touching, stepping on or even kissing sculptures and monuments—isn’t a new phenomenon. Tourists around the world have been doing it for decades, hoping for rewards like good luck, romance or, in the case of Ireland's Blarney Stone, the “gift of the gab.”

Like Milan’s bull mosaic, many of these statues are rubbed in intimate zones. Tourists grope the testicles of the bronze bull statue on Wall Street in New York. Women kiss and touch the bronze effigy of 19th-century French journalist Victor Noir that tops his grave. Many statues of women are targeted at the breasts, including a depiction of Shakespeare’s Juliet in Verona and one of the song character Molly Malone in Dublin.

Tilly Cripwell, a young woman who busks near the Malone statue, told BBC News last year that she’s witnessed “disgusting behavior.” While most of the statue is dark with age, its bosom gleams. “The fact that this icon is immortalized in a statue but reduced to her breasts just seems so wrong,” Cripwell said.

Complaints aren’t only rooted in propriety. Statue rubbing has caused physical damage to monuments: Too much sweat, skin oil and friction can erode bronze.

Milan’s bull mosaic was last restored in 2017, according to a statement from the city. Galli tells the AFP that for the latest refurbishment, he used epoxy resins to glue down the replacement tiles, rather than lime and sand mortar. He hopes this will make the piece more resistant to wear and tear.

During the restoration, some tourists who’d aimed for the bull’s testicles and found them cordoned off went instead to the shopping center’s Rome mosaic, reports the AFP. Atop its tiled she-wolf, they spun on their heels.

Sonja Anderson | Read More

Sonja Anderson is a daily correspondent for Smithsonian magazine who covers art, archaeology and culture, from newly discovered artifacts to the latest art heists.