Tourist causes mass outrage after carving his and partner’s names into Colosseum

A tourist has sparked outrage in Italy after he was caught on video scrawling the name of his apparent lover into the walls of the 2000-year-old Colosseum.

Mankind has always been a fan of graffiti. Even cavemen used to paint on the cave walls to tell stories about their tribes and adventures. But as society evolved, this practice got highly frowned upon when being done in public places.

So when a tourist was seen carving his and his partner’s names into the 2000-year-old Colosseum walls, people were not happy about it.

Even though he was caught on video, the man only smiled at the camera when he was confronted by another tourist. The tourist went on to get a guard who reportedly didn’t try to stop the vandal.

Man carved his name into the Colosseum walls

A video was posted on YouTube where a fellow tourist, Ryan Lutz, of Orange, California filmed the tourist carving the wall in a video titled “Asshole tourist carves name in Colosseum in Rome 6-23-23.”

The man used keys to scrawl “Ivan+Haley 23” into the walls of the ancient Roman structure, also known as the Flavian Amphitheater. 

“Are you f**king serious, man?” the person who recorded the video can be heard saying to the culprit before the man turned around and smiled.

Lutz told AP News that he tried to get a guard to take action, but neither the guard nor his supervisor did anything, even after Lutz identified the man and offered to share the video with the guards.

The video was quickly picked up by several Italian news outlets and sparked a national outrage, which has now spread globally.

“I consider it very serious, unworthy, and a sign of great incivility that a tourist defaces one of the most famous places in the world, the Colosseum, to engrave the name of his fiancée,” Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano said on Twitter, according to a translation by CBS News. 

The man has not been publicly identified. But if caught by police, he could face more than $16,000 in fines and up to five years behind bars, according to the Italian news agency ANSA. 

Italy’s Minister of Tourism, Daniela Santanche, said she hoped the man would be punished “so that he understands the gravity of the gesture.”

“We cannot allow those who visit our nation to feel free to behave in this way,” Santanche said, according to the Associated Press. 

The man’s action has caused a global outrage

In response to seeing the video, several people have expressed their thoughts on the incident.

In response to Sangiuliano’s tweet, one person wrote: “Fine him $25,000 or 5 years in jail, for defacing a national historical treasure, will take that smile off his face.”

Another said: “I’d send him to clean all the walls in Rome.”

“A moron, like the “activists” who deface monuments and fountains to save the environment,” a third person said.

A fourth wrote: “In their home, they have nothing of authentic history, this being comes from a country where everything is fake.”