MATERA – By jumping from one wall to another, a group of British parkour tightrope walkers damaged a building Matera. The Washington Post reported it today by republishing a video released in April by the group of London athletes parkour Team Phat.
“Hide the evidence,” says a voice off screen after one of the athletes, jumping from one wall to another, causes a stone ledge to detach. The Washington Post underlines that the episode “adds to other concerns about the threats that human activities – from tourism and influencers, to street artists and athletes – pose to cities and historical monuments”.
A clip of the video was posted on Instagram and viewed 2.4 million times, provoking furious reactions online: «Matera should not be used as a parkour park, that stone could have been there since before the discovery of America», commented a man who said he was Italian and who also practices parkour.
Team Phat, which is based in London, was previously responsible for an incident in Venice in which one of the group jumped from a building into a canal, prompting the mayor to call him “an idiot”.
The group had been fined and banned from the city.
In the new video another from Team Phat proclaims: «We have been banned from Venice, we can never go back. So we came to the place that comes closest to it.”
