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Egypt's 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple -

In 2013, a 15-year-old Chinese boy defaced an Egyptian artifact at the 3,500-year-old Luxor Temple by writing, "Ding Jinhao was here.” According to NPR, it was in chalk.

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Fontana della Barcaccia -

The next day they broke the Fontana della Barcaccia, one of Rome's most famous fountains found at the foot of the Spanish Steps in Piazza di Spagna, which was built in 1627 and which had only recently gone through a restoration. And they did it in the worst way: throwing beer bottles full of urine at it. An official said the damage was permanent, and 23 Dutch nationals were arrested and were looking at six months jail time or the equivalent of a US$50,000 fine. The total cost of all the damage to the squares came to around $3.2 million. The game ended in a tie.

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'Pauline Bonaparte as Venus Victrix' (1804) -

Antonio Canova's 200-year-old plaster model statue of Paolina Bonaparte was damaged in 2020 when a 50-year-old Austrian visitor at Italy's Gipsoteca Museum broke three toes off of it when he sat on it to pose for a photo.

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Claude Monet painting -

Claude Monet's 'Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat,' which was worth over US$10 million at the time, was just hanging on a wall in the National Gallery of Ireland when a man put his fist through it in 2012. The resulting damage was three huge rips, and the painstaking restoration took 18 months. The culprit was tried on vandalism charges.

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Qing dynasty vases -

A man was visiting the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge when he tripped on an untied shoelace and tumbled down a flight of stairs and into a Chinese vase from the Qing dynasty which had a domino effect on the two others next to it, thought to be worth £100,000 (US$120,300) in total. To be fair, there were no handrails for him to catch hold of, but he was still banned from the museum. A restorer was contracted to put the more than 400 pieces back together, which date from the latter years of the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662-1722).

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Machu Picchu -

Peruvian authorities were quite confused at the debasing of their cultural heritage by the sudden trend of streaking and posing naked at Machu Picchu. Park attendants officially labeled nudity at the site a “threat” and discussed banning foreign tourists without official guides and limiting the number of visitors.

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Jeff Koons' balloon dog -

A blue 'balloon' dog sculpture created by Koons and worth US$42,000 shattered into tiny pieces when someone visiting the Bel-Air Fine Art gallery's booth at Art Wynwood (a contemporary art fair in Miami) accidentally kicked the podium it was situated on during the fair's opening cocktail hour.

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Machu Picchu -

If only nudity was the worst. In 2020, six tourists were reportedly arrested after human fecal matter was discovered inside the sacred Temple of the Sun.

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Yayoi Kusama's pumpkin -

Yayoi Kusama's 'Infinity Mirrors' were all the rage in 2017 with hoards of people trying to get the perfect Instagram photos. But a visitor tripped and shattered a pumpkin sculpture at the Hirshhorn Museum. It's unclear how much monetary damage was done, as the gourd was only one part of the installation, but Artnet News reported that a similar-looking Kusama piece sold as a standalone work previously went for around US$800,000 at auction in 2015.

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A 300-year-old Hercules statue -

In 2015, two tourists shattered part of a priceless statue in Cremona, Italy, after climbing on it to take a selfie. They broke off a part of the crown from the Statue of the Two Hercules (circa 1700), which then shattered on the ground.

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'The Drunken Satyr' statue -

In 2014, an Italian student looking for an impressive photo broke an early 19th-century statue by hopping in its lap to snap some selfies. Titled 'The Drunken Satyr,' the statue is a copy of an ancient Greek sculpture, and the act was entirely caught on video by security cameras at Milan's Academy of Fine Arts of Brera.

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An 18th-century St. Michael statue -

In November 2016, a tourist knocked over and destroyed a priceless statue from the early 1700s in Lisbon's National Museum of Ancient Art. Museum officials confirmed that damage to the statue is irreparable, according to CN Traveller.

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A 16th-century statue of Dom Sebastião -

Earlier in 2016, a 24-year-old tourist scaled the facade of Lisbon's Rossio train station to take a selfie with the statue of Dom Sebastião, a 16th-century Portuguese king. But things didn't go as planned, and the 126-year-old statue fell to the ground and shattered. The offender reportedly tried to flee, but was apprehended by authorities.

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Campo de' Fiori -

In 2015, some 7,000 Dutch soccer fans descended on Rome for a match between Rotterdam soccer team Feyenoord and AS Roma. For some reason they got completely drunk and took over two famous squares, trashing the beautiful scenery and causing tourists and shopkeepers to flee. On the first day, they took over the central marketplace known as Campo de' Fiori and left it a field of trash, reports NPR. But the next day was worse.

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A 15th-century statue of the Virgin Mary -

A statue of the Virgin Mary thought to have been made by the 15th-century sculptor Giovanni d'Ambrogio was minding its own business at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in 2013 when an American tourist decided to give it a high five and broke the pinky finger off.

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An 800-year-old coffin -

In 2017, a family visiting Prittlewell Priory Museum, a historic monastery just outside of London, decided it would be a cool photo-op to put their young child in an 800-year-old coffin. The sandstone sarcophagus consequently fell off its stand, and a large piece broke off of it. The family fled the scene without reporting the damage, but were caught on the museum's security camera.

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Pont des Arts footbridge -

All the romantic tourists who believed they could secure their relationship with a padlock on a world-famous bridge in Paris and throw the key into the Seine to signify an everlasting love were severely disappointed in 2014 when part of the bridge collapsed and had to be replaced with wooden panels. Soon the so-called love locks were removed, and who knows how many of those relationships survived!

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Easter Island -

One of the famous moai statues, carved by the Rapa Nui people in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500, is missing part of its ear because in 2008 a 25-year-old Finnish tourist decided to rip it off as a souvenir. He was arrested and fined US$17,000 for the damage he caused to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Goblin Valley State Park -

Goblin Valley State Park is named for its unique rock formations dating back to the Jurassic Period. The rock itself is 170 million years old, and it took some 25 million years of erosion to carve the shapes. Two former Boy Scout leaders, Glenn Tuck Taylor and David Benjamin Hall, decided to film themselves toppling one over and post it on YouTube in 2014. They were sentenced to a year of probation, US$925 in court costs, $1,500 for the cost of the investigation, and an undetermined amount to erect signs around the park warning against vandalism.

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Picasso's 'The Actor' -

In 2010, a woman visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art fell onto Pablo Picasso's painting 'The Actor' and tore the canvas—worth more than US$100 million at the time. The six-inch (15-cm) tear on the lower right-hand corner of the painting was later repaired.

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Elgin Marbles -

The controversial Elgin Marbles are a collection of ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and Acropolis of Athens that remain in the British National Museum. Documents released by the British Museum under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that a series of minor accidents, thefts, and acts of vandalism by visitors have inflicted damage to the sculptures over the years, including a 1961 incident when two schoolboys knocked off a part of a centaur's leg and in 1970 when letters were scratched onto the thigh of another figure.

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A one-of-a-kind sculptural clock -

In 2016, a one-of-a-kind, modern sculptural clock created by Minnesota artist James Borden was damaged at the National Watch and Clock Museum in the US when a visitor ignored the “do not touch” signs and tried to make the clock work. Footage shows the timepiece falling off the wall after the visitor toys with it, then shows the visitor trying to put it on the wall again, but ultimately resting it on the ground.

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The Colosseum -

Tourists have been leaving graffiti on the walls of the Colosseum in Rome for ages, and visitors are still vandalizing it by picking up nearby rocks and carving their initials into the walls, Fodor's reports. Officials warn they are arresting vandals and fining them US$20,000 apiece, but in 2015 two American tourists used a coin to carve their initials into the ancient stadium and then took a selfie. They were arrested almost immediately.

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Rothko's 'Black on Maroon' -

In 2012, one man visiting London's Tate Modern stepped in front of the barrier of famed abstract painter Mark Rothko's 'Black on Maroon' and spray-painted it. Wlodzimierz Umaniec said he was improving it, as he was part of the "Yellowism" movement, whose manifesto describes itself as "not art or anti-art.” He was sent to prison as a result.

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Auschwitz museum -

For reasons still impossible to comprehend, some visitors graffitied the concentration camp bunks where prisoners once slept, and they even broke off small pieces of the sacred site to take home, reports Fodor's.

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Roughly US$200,000 worth of damage to art exhibition -

A woman in Los Angeles was trying to take a selfie at the 14th Factory exhibition space in Lincoln Heights when she accidentally set off a domino effect toppling a whole row of art pieces that were part of the Hypercaine exhibition by Hong Kong-based artist Simon Birch and a series of international collaborators. Three of the 12 crown-like sculptures were reportedly permanently damaged, and the cost of the damage was an estimated US$200,000.

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Paolo Porpora's 'Flowers' -

In 2015, a Taiwanese 12-year-old tripped at a museum and accidentally punched a hole through a 17th-century artwork. The painting was a 350-year-old Paolo Porpora oil on canvas work called 'Flowers' and was valued at US$1.5 million! Luckily the work was insured and his family wasn't asked to assist in restoration fees.

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Works by Dalí and Goya -

A group of women in Yekaterinburg, Russia, tried to take a selfie in 2018 at the International Arts Center Main Avenue. The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) found that while the women were trying to take a photo, they accidentally topped a structure carrying two works of art—Francisco Goya's etching from the 'Los caprichos' series and Salvador Dalí's interpretation of it, only the latter of which was damaged.

Sources: (Grunge) (NPR) (Fodor's) (CNN) (CN Traveler) (Artnet News)

See also: Go away! Countries that want to reduce the number of tourists

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