A tourist was arrested in Pompeii after being caught red-handed recording his name on a wall

A tourist from Kazakhstan was arrested this Saturday in the Italian archaeological site of Pompeii after being caught scratching the wall of an ancient Roman house to write the word “ALI”.

The Minister of Culture of Italy, Gennaro Sangiuliano, denounced this in a statement “very serious fact” and announced that the individual will have to pay the costs of the restoration thanks to a new law that increases penalties against those who attack national heritage.

The arrested man was caught red-handed by the site’s guards while he was writing the letters “ALI” on the plaster of one of the walls of the site known as House of the Ceiiancient family of Pompeii.

Immediately afterwards he was arrested by Carabineros agents and must answer for a crime of damage to property.

It is not the first time that someone has attacked the ancient Roman city of Pompeii and the other nearby archaeological sites, devastated by the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in 79 AD.

On June 3, another tourist, from the Netherlands, scribbled his signature with a marker on a frescoed wall in a Roman-era house in Herculaneumnear Pompeii.