A person seen on video final month utilizing his keys to etch his love for his girlfriend on a wall within the Colosseum in Rome has written a letter of apology, saying he had no concept the almost 2,000-year-old monument was so historic.
“I admit with deepest embarrassment that it was solely after what regrettably occurred that I discovered of the monument’s antiquity,” the person — recognized by his lawyer as 31-year-old Ivan Danailov Dimitrov — wrote in a letter dated July 4 and addressed to the Rome prosecutor’s workplace, the mayor of Rome and “the municipality of Rome.”
Parts of the letter had been first published on Wednesday within the Rome each day newspaper Il Messaggero.
In it, Mr. Dimitrov acknowledged the “seriousness of the deed I dedicated,” and provided his “heartfelt and honest apologies to Italians and all the world for the harm performed to a monument, which is, in reality, heritage of all humanity.” Mr. Dimitrov provided to “sincerely and concretely” proper his fallacious and redeem himself.
The carving came to light final month after a fellow vacationer in Rome filmed a person scratching “Ivan + Hayley 23/6/23” right into a brick on a wall of the Colosseum. The video went viral, and “Ivan,” whose identification was then not identified, was broadly rebuked for his devil-may-care angle. Admonished — with an expletive — by the video-taker, Mr. Dimitrov carried on.
The brick that was defaced was truly a part of a wall constructed throughout a mid-Nineteenth century restoration of the monument, which was inaugurated within the first century A.D. However that made little distinction to Colosseum authorities who stated that it didn’t change the truth that the act was vandalism.
Mr. Dimitrov was finally recognized by Italian army law enforcement officials who crosschecked the 2 lovers’ names with registered friends in Rome and located they’d stayed in an Airbnb rental within the Cinecittà neighborhood. Roberto Martina, the police commander who oversaw the operation stated they tracked Mr. Dimitrov to England, the place he and his girlfriend, who shouldn’t be beneath investigation, dwell.
Italy isn’t any stranger to unruly guests leaving their mark. Three years in the past, a spate of incidents prompted lawmakers to stiffen penalties for vandalizing Italy’s venerable cultural heritage. And the nation desires to impose even tougher laws on local weather activists, who’ve vandalized cultural property to protest what they name authorities inaction on local weather change.
“It ought to be stated that when international vacationers come to Italy, from anyplace, not any explicit nationality, there’s this concept that they’ve come to a rustic the place every part is allowed, the place they flip a blind eye, the place it’s that’s the way it goes,” stated Alexandro Maria Tirelli, Mr. Dimitrov’s lawyer. However his consumer might get caught within the crackdown, risking between two and 5 years in jail and a positive as much as 15,000 euros, about $16,300. Mr. Tirelli stated he hoped for a plea cut price that may enable his consumer to pay a positive however serve no jail time.
Mr. Dimitrov’s apology, the lawyer stated, was an try to clarify “that he had pulled what he thought was a innocent stunt.”
Italian media on Wednesday pulled no punches. The letter of apology “defaced widespread sense,” Il Messaggero declared. Dagospia, a well-liked on-line web site, advised the letter solely made issues worse (Did he assume the Colosseum was a fast-food restaurant, it requested?). A information anchor on the lunchtime information program of RAI 1, the principle state channel, stated the truth that Mr. Dimitrov hadn’t identified that the monument was historic “can be a considerably unbelievable excuse.”
A spokesman for the Rome’s mayor workplace stated that they’d not acquired Mr. Dimitrov’s letter. The Rome prosecutor’s workplace declined to remark.
“I hope this apology will likely be accepted,” Mr. Dimitrov wrote within the letter.
