Italian police are looking for two German tourists after vandals spray-painted a football slogan on a sixteenth century Florence landmark, the third such incident this summer.
Seven large letters and numbers believed to be about German football team, Munich 1860, were drawn in black paint on external columns of the Vasari Corridor overlooking the Arno River, local media La Nazione said.
Police have identified two German tourists in their early 20s that they wish to speak to in connection with the incident, which detectives estimate happened at dawn on Wednesday, Wanted In Rome has said.
Video of the men being sought has been published on social media by Carabinieri Firenze, the city’s police force, while local media outlet Tgr Rai Toscana has published of workers assessing the damage.
The men are both white and wearing jeans and baseball caps; one in a black top and the other in a blue one.
They are seen walking through an arch together before reappearing from a greater distance and seeming to jump up between two pillars.
The half-mile (1km) corridor, built in 1565, is an elevated enclosed passageway connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti.
There are calls for tougher penalties to be imposed on vandals, with Uffizi Galleries director Eike Schmidt saying in a statement that in the US, similar crimes can bring a jail term of five years.
He said: “Clearly this is not a drunken whim, but a premeditated act. Enough with symbolic punishments and imaginative extenuating circumstances. We need the hard fist of the law.
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Graffiti was left on the Vittorio Emanuele Arcade in Milan earlier in August. Pic: AP
“The existing law must be applied… And if this is not enough, a stricter law must be introduced.”
Italians were outraged earlier this summer by a of a tourist carving his and his girlfriend’s initials into the Colosseum, and vandals climbed to the top of the Vittorio Emanuele II Gallery in Milan and spray-painted an arch facing the Duomo cathedral.
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella promised a full investigation to identify those responsible for the “shameful act of vandalism” at the Vasari Corridor.
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Tourist defaces Colosseum
Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, said that vandals “need to understand that even a small scratch will be prosecuted from now on”.
The corridor, an aerial walkway, was designed by Giorgio Vasari for Duke Cosimo de Medici to allow grand dukes to move safely from Pitti Palace to the seat of government in Palazzo Vecchio.
