The 27-year-old Dutchman used a large permanent marker
Sign a wall in the Herculaneum excavations. A 27-year-old Dutchman, on holiday in Campania, decided to leave a sign of his passage by marking with a marker the ancient stuccos of a house torn from the ashes of Vesuvius. A signature affixed with a black marker, one of the indelible ones. The man was immediately identified and reported for damaging and defacing artistic works.
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It is only the latest of the many absurd stories that have concerned the archaeological sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii over the years. Like in 2020, when a tourist took a selfie on the roof of the Pompeii spa. It was August 17, 2020 when the image of the tourist on the Roman domus went around the world.
Or, the following year, the manhole cover stolen from the Domus of Sirico in Pompeii. And how can we forget when, in August 2022, the police stopped a scooter at ‘Porta Anfiteatro’, with a man on the saddle. Even in that case it was a tourist, a 33-year-old Australian, who illegally entered the archaeological park through the Porta Vesuvio gate where some workers were engaged in routine activities.
When the soldiers stopped him, he apologized, saying he didn’t know that those avenues, once crossed by chariots and sandals, were forbidden to unauthorized vehicles. The fact is that he had traveled a kilometer and a half of history with a rented scooter, taking advantage of the temporary opening of a service passage. Also in 2020, on March 29, the police at the local station were alerted by the security staff to a theft. Viewing the video surveillance images, they recognized the perpetrator of the theft: a 25-year-old local man. After the theft the man returned home and it was there that the items stolen shortly before were recovered.
