English tourist accused of carving name in Colosseum says he did not realise its age
English tourist accused of carving name in Colosseum says he did not realise its age
Ivan Dimitrov, from Bristol, apologises to Rome mayor and says he was ‘embarrassed’ to learn of amphitheatre’s antiquity
He's 27 and claims he didn't know how old they Colosseum is?! Bullshit. He's only apologizing because he got caught.
Not just his age: he was inside it, so he had waited in line, paid for it, and was seeing the ruined stone structure up close. No way could he not know it was really, really old.
Agreed. What he actually didn't know was that there was a 15k euro fine and a five-year prison sentence.
Well, now a lot more people are aware of the serious consequences of defacing iconic cultural heritage, thanks to that idiot. So there's a silver lining at least.
Honestly, I think he should just get the fine and maybe some community service. It's not like he did some terrible evil thing, he simply caused a tiny amount of damage to huge ancient structure.
Why should he lose 5 years of his life over something simple like this? Just give him a big fine that makes him regret it, and he won't do it again.
I have no idea how he didn't catch a complete beat down. I wouldn't be able to restrain myself if I saw this shit in person.
Some people, as unfortunate as it is, can be honest and sincere by saying that they didn't know how the colosseum is.
Reminds me of the time we first visited Venice. Wife and I were admiring the splendour of St Marks Square (Piazza San Marco) and were stood next to some American tourists and overheard one say, "Oh my god this place is amazing; can you imagine how great its going to be in a few years when they finish it." There was zero construction work going on......
The first time I was at St Marks Square some Euro dude stripped to his underwear and started sunbathing. Police showed up and told him to put clothes on.
In some countries like Spain it is perfectly legal to be fully naked in any public space as long as you are not being sexually explicit. The Euro dude likely assumed this was the case in Italy as well -- I'm actually surprised that they had a problem with somebody in their underwear; it sounds prudish.
They probably thought the piazza lacked some McDonald's and Starbucks.
So he wouldn't have been embarrassed if he had defaced a newer building.
Sounds like he wouldn't mind a bunch of Italians scratching their name into his house.
Makes sense. Cause it would have been perfectly OK if he carved his name into, say, something at Disney World, or a stranger's house, since those are newer structures...
So he'd scratch his name on the glass of a bus stop, and that would be ok? How about carving his name in a tree?
No one give a f* about your mark.
At face value, you're right. His mark is pointless, and in the colosseum case, degrading even.
But a lot of ancient buildings are nowadays studied for the marks found on them. If you squint your mind's eye a bit, you can even imagine that some of the cave paintings that we nowadays admire are nothing but a testament to some dude's wish to leave their mark. No one cared until someone started to care.
Funny how relative all these things are, right?
This gives me so many mixed feelings. 🤭
Britishers after colonizing a counrry
What a complete knob. That's like saying you didn't know Michael Jackson was a pop star, or that the Pyramids were tombs for kings, pathetic.
That’s like saying you didn’t know Michael Jackson was a pop star
...after you bought a ticket for one of his shows and entered the stage.
Is he trying for American citizenship?
Hey now, I resemble that remark.
Can we just throw this dude in the colosseum and get an example of how it was historicly used. I dont think this ones contributing much else.
If the Colosseum is still standing in another 2000 years, people will be pointing at that graffiti and saying "Look, people in the 21st century were idiots just like us," just like we do with the surviving Classical graffiti. In a sense, he's participating in an ancient tradition.
We should add a "were drawn and quartered here for defacing the Roman Colosseum." Then people will think we're hardcore like that and they'll also know what we called the building and the people who built it.
Or they'll think that's the name of one of the headless statues in the area and that we punished people who stole the head from statues by drawing artwork of them while forcibly confining them in this nameless building that just happened to be here when time started in 500 years because it's the Idiocracy future.
Tourists have been carving their names into shit for - and I'm not exaggerating here - thousands of years. I"m having a hard time finding evidence for this now, what with most of my searching only returning content for this particular modern incident, but I swear I've seen documentaries where they show ancient people doing, essentially, the same thing.
The ruins of Pompeii have some interesting graffiti:
https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-pompeii-and-herculaneu
eh, it's a brick wall, probably part of a restoration, so it's not thousands of years old, truthfully.
I don't see how that's relevant though.