Fountain in Rome`s Piazza Navona vandalized
Baku, May 16 (AZERTAC). A man has vandalized a fountain in Rome`s famed Piazza Navona, detaching two big chunks off a marble statue.
The damaged statue was a 19th-century copy. A Rome culture official, Umberto Broccoli, said the pieces were recovered and can be reattached to the Moor Fountain.
Security camera footage on Italian TV stations and websites Sunday shows a man climbing in the fountain and repeatedly attacking the statue — one of four large faces at the edge of the fountain — with a large rock. The man struck Saturday morning, when the favorite tourist spot was still relatively quiet, and left before police arrived at the scene. The whole attack lasted less than a minute, according to Italian news reports.
The copy of the original Moor Fountain by 16th-century artist Giacomo della Porta is on the square`s south end. Bernini added the central figure in the 1600s.
Investigators also were looking Sunday into whether the same vandal was behind another attack just a few hours later to another symbol of Rome: the Trevi Fountain. A security camera caught a man hurling a rock at the Baroque masterpiece — though missing its target.
Italian officials have tried to fight vandalism in Rome, installing cameras and sending more police to patrol monuments. But the sheer amount of the Italian capital`s artistic treasures makes the task difficult.
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