Rome (TAN): The authorities in Rome are working to check incidents of vandalism at its historical sites at a time the city is witnessing record number of tourists.
Rome’s entire historic center is a Unesco World Heritage Site, the largest such urban site in the world. The Italy capital saw a record 16 million visitors in 2018.
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“With the number of cultural sites and the rising number of tourists, it is impossible to reduce vandalism to zero,” Vanna Mannucci, vice-president of the Rome chapter of Italia Nostra, an advocacy group for cultural heritage, told China’sgovernment news agency Xinhua.
Mannucci said it was important for visitors to realise the monuments weren’t just part of Rome or Italy’s heritage but of the world.
In recent years, a few tourists have been arrested for carving their names in the Colosseum and one, for trying to steal a brick from the structure. Hundreds have been arrested or fined for bathing in the Trevi Fountain and many booked for spray-painting other historical structures.
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Pedro Barrajon, rector of the European University of Rome, which offers a degree in tourism and territorial protection, told Xinhua: “The larger the number of tourists, the more likely it is that a few will play outside the rules.”
