Two German tourists have been arrested this Tuesday in the city of Florence accused of being the authors of the graffiti painted in the Vasariano Corridor, which crosses the Ponte Vecchio, an act of vandalism that has outraged the Tuscan capital.
Agents of the Carabineros (militarized police) identified the two German tourists by reviewing the urban surveillance cameras and located them in a city apartment, where they were with nine other friends, also taken to the police station for identification, local media report. .
The Vasariano Corridor, which owes its name to the architect who designed it, Giorgio Vasari, was built by order of the Medici family in 1565 and runs for a kilometer and a half along the upper part of the Ponte Vecchio, thus crossing the Arno River , so that the princes could walk through it without mixing with the people.
This morning the building was covered in graffiti on the columns and the city’s mayor, Dario Nardella, announced the immediate opening of an investigation to find the culprit.
The Tuscan company of local public services “is mobilized,” he added, “to carry out all the necessary expert reports and for the interventions that are necessary.”
This new act of vandalism occurs after several similar ones that occurred this summer; the last one was that of the spray-painted inscriptions that appeared a few days ago in the highest part of the Vittorio Emmanuel Gallery, located in the central square of the Milan Cathedral.
In addition, last July several tourists wrote on the walls of the Colosseum in Rome, which generated widespread social condemnation, as well as from the Government, which has brought a bill to Parliament that establishes up to 60,000 euros for the perpetrators of vandalism. fine ($65,500), plus criminal penalties.
The Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, defined the damage to the Vasariano Corridor as a “very serious act of vandalism because it hits one of the symbolic places” of the national heritage, and urged the culprits to be identified and punished “immediately”.
Eike Schmidt, the director of the Uffizi Gallery, also expressed his outrage: “I condemn the fouling of the columns of the Vasari Corridor that occurred last night. Since the discovery of the detestable act at dawn, the carabinieri have been analyzing the video recordings and following various related clues”.
The Vasariano Corridor was used for years by the Florentine princes to go from their residence, the Pitti Palace, to the seat of power of the ancient Republic, the Palazzo Vecchio, without mixing with the people, and 600 paintings of figures are exhibited within its walls. like Rembrandt, Rubens or Velázquez since 1973.
