A tourist filmed carving his and his girlfriend’s name into the walls of the Roman Colosseum faces a huge fine as Italian authorities vow to find the man.
I genuinely and unironically think vandalism like this should be grounds for cancellation of your passport for a while in addition to all other penalties (say, for 5 years). If you can't play nice, you're grounded and you don't get to visit other countries until you grow up.
I think this is a reasonable idea. They’d need to find the guy first to figure out his passport details, but after that, fine him, deport him, then flag him against entry into the the EU for a designated amount of time.
If I had a nickel for every time some shithead tourist carved a name into an ancient site, I'd have like three nickels, which isn't a lot but it's infuriating it's happened three times.
In the interests of prevention, should there be heightened security? It's a shame there's probably little funding for it.
Funnily enough I caught a guy in Pompei touching the frescos. I'm a mild guy but I couldn't help but think that, as far as mankind is involved, killing that idiot on the spot would have have a net positive impact on the world.
As penance for their crime, they must battle IN the Colosseum! A fight with gladiators, and lions, and various monsters of Greek mythology which are just two or three different animals smashed together! If they can survive the cattle man and the chicken lizard and whatever the heck a manticore is, they will be set free and given a ticket to New Zealand, where all shows set in Greece are filmed.
manticore were in fact persian, and known to the romans all the same. (and ArugalaZ, it was a monster with a human head, body of a lion, and a tail either like a venomous porcupine or that of a scorpion.)
The article does say "and possible jail time" but from the ending paragraphs it sounds like the other tourists that carved their initials years ago just got a similar fine and a mark on their records.
It does seem low and I wonder if it scales at all or is a standard fine? At that rate, Jeff Bezos could go carve an entire autobiography into the place for an amount of money he wouldn't even notice losing.