14 times foolish tourists damaged our ancient sites

A British holidaymaker is facing a fine for carving into a wall at Pompeii, but such bad behaviour is nothing new

It seems we can’t go a single week without a story of damage caused to a great landmark by a foolish tourist. A British holidaymaker is currently facing a large fine for defacing a frescoed wall in Pompeii, reportedly carving some initials, and the word “Mylaw”, with a blunt object. A local police source told The Telegraph that the man was “mortified” after he was caught, but that “he will have to pay.”
He isn’t the only tourist determined to make his mark. In June, a visitor from Kazakstan was spotted writing on the wall of Pompeii’s House of Ceii. And there are plenty more instances across the world – some of which is centuries old. Here are some of the most staggering recent examples. 
A German tourist was branded “an imbecile” last year after clambering onto a Renaissance statue of the god Neptune in Florence. Authorities say he broke off a chunk of marble from Neptune’s chariot and damaged the hoof of a sculpted horse at the base of the monument, causing about €5,000 (£4,250) of damage. They managed to track down the 22-year-old tourist, who had to pay a hefty fine.
Florence seems to be a hotspot for this sort of behaviour, with another incident happening in close proximity – this time involving two German tourists. The pair found themselves wanted by Italian police after graffiti referencing the football team Munich 1860 was found on external columns of the 460-year-old Vasari Corridor. 
Uffizi Galleries director Eike Schmidt called for stricter punishments for such acts, saying: “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.”
Last summer, a tourist was filmed scratching a romantic message into a wall at the world’s most famous amphitheatre. Ivan Dimitrov, a 27-year-old fitness instructor living in Bristol, was seen, in a video posted online, using a set of keys to carve the words “Ivan + Hayley 23” in full view of other tourists.
The man’s actions risked a fine of up to €15,000 (£12,850) and a jail term of up to five years. He eventually wrote a letter of apology to the city’s mayor, saying he was “embarrassed” and claiming he did not realise the building was so ancient. 
The desire for souvenirs seems to lead tourists to make remarkable decisions. Marko Kulju, a 26-year-old Finnish national, was forced to apologise to Easter Island residents in 2008 after chipping the ear off one of its famous Moai statues. The mayor of the island was less than impressed, telling local radio: “If an ear is cut off, then an ear gets cut. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth: that would be my form of justice.”
Britons sadly aren’t exempt from poor behaviour. In 2018, a hanging stone at Brimham Rocks – which formed during the Ice Age – was toppled off a crag in an act described as “mindless destruction”. The 320-million-year-old balancing rock was damaged beyond repair. 
For hundreds of years, travellers and caravans in Niger used an isolated tree in the Sahara Desert as a landmark. It was the only one in a 250-mile radius, giving it the moniker “the loneliest tree in the world”. But in 1973, it met its match: a suspected drunk driver ploughed into it, snapping its trunk. The driver’s name was never released, and now the spindly remains of the tree are held in the country’s National Museum. 
Britons were also to blame for the damage sustained to an 800-year-old coffin at Prittlewell Priory Museum in Southend in 2017. A child was placed in the sarcophagus by their parents, ostensibly to take a photograph, when a piece crumbled off the sandstone casket. The family fled from the scene without reporting it, but were caught on CCTV. 
That same year, a truck drove across part of Peru’s ancient Nazca Lines, leaving irreparable tyre scars on the sacred site. The mysterious geoglyphs, created sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD, have been described by Unesco as one of archaeology’s “greatest enigmas”. Three were damaged by the driver, although he was later released without charge as the incident was deemed a genuine mistake. 
In 2016, a group of tourists smashed a much-loved sandstone pillar in the Cape Kiwanda state park, dubbed the ‘Duckbill’, claiming that it was a health and safety hazard.
“I asked them, you know, why they knocked the rock down, and the reply I got was: their buddy broke their leg earlier because of that rock,” said a witness.
Tourist misbehaviour predates the social media age. In 2000, a Belgian tourist admitted taking a stone from the neolithic burial ground at Clava Cairns, Scotland. Within the year, however, he returned the two-pound rock to the site, claiming he had been cursed. During that time, he said his daughter had broken her leg, his wife had become very ill, he had lost his job and also broken his arm.
The Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, are regarded as one of the geological wonders of the world. For a graffiti artist in 2013, however, it was seen as a challenge. An anonymous vandal spray-painted a giant mural, taking on considerable risk to life for the huge artwork. Experts were worried about permanent damage to the rock, so it was quickly removed. 
Death Valley National Park is one of the driest, hottest places on Earth. The vulnerable environment is protected for its unique wildlife and mysterious stones, which seem to move by themselves. That didn’t stop a driver in an SUV tearing up a part of the playa known as The Racetrack in 2016, leaving the fragile landscape scarred with long tyre track ruts and doughnuts. 
It seems that no matter how respected a site is, a tourist will always have an urge to write their name on it. A decade ago, images circulated on social media of Chinese characters scrawled into a monument in Luxor, roughly translating to “Ding Jinhao was here”. After an online frenzy, the culprit was found, with his parents apologising to their local newspaper. Apparently their son “cried all night” after being tracked down by internet users. 
Remarkably, the same thing also happened three years later on Mount Everest. Monuments, signs and stone tablets on the world’s highest mountain were covered in graffiti, again mostly attributed to Chinese tourists. In a bid to curb the practice, officials compiled a “bad behaviour list” and published it in national media to name and shame the culprits. 
This story was first published in September 2023 and has been revised and updated.