Tourist sprays football graffiti on 460-year-old Italian landmark

The Vasari Corridor in Florence had ‘DKS 1860’, a reference to a Munich-based football club, painted on seven of its archways

German tourists have vandalised a 460-year-old landmark with football-related graffiti, police in Italy have said.

The Vasari Corridor in Florence, Italy, had “DKS 1860”, a reference to 1860 Munich football club, spray painted on seven of its archways.

The tourists, aged 20 and 21, are alleged to have defaced the corridor while staying in an Airbnb with nine others, according to Carabinieri military police.

It comes after dozens of Italian landmarks have been vandalised this year, with one man claiming he wasn’t aware of the “antiquity” of Rome’s Colosseum after he was filmed scratching his and his girlfriend’s name into it.

The suspects were caught after police raided the Airbnb and found two cans of spray paint and paint-stained clothing in the property.

In a statement, the Florentine Carabinieri told CNN: “The Carabinieri of the Operations Unit of the Florence and of the Uffizi Carabinieri Station, analyzing video surveillance footage, managed to identify two individuals who, at 5.20 this morning, damaged the very important artistic site.”

The damage will require thousands of euros to repair (AP)

Italy’s Culture Ministry said the vandalism would require €10,000 (£8,570) worth of repairs, with work to be carried out under the watch of 24-hour armed guards.

Earlier this month, tourists who destroyed an Italian sculpture valued at €200,000 were denounced as “imbeciles” by the country’s deputy prime minister, with one local politician demanding reparations for their actions.

A group of 17 tourists were renting a villa in the town of Viggiu, in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, when the damage to the 150-year-old artwork occurred – and was captured on CCTV. Two of the group climbed into the fountain to wrap their arms around the sculpture, Domina by the artist Enrico Butti, while another pushed it with a stick before it crashed to the ground.

In June a man was caught by a fuming sightseer engraving “Ivan + Hayley 23” into the 2,000-year-old Colosseum in Rome.