As the summer travel season resumes in Italy, so too have news reports of international visitors damaging the ancient monuments they came here to see.

On Sunday, June 2nd, a 27-year-old Dutch man was reported to police for using a black permanent marker to scrawl graffiti on a frescoed Roman wall at the archaeological park of Herculaneum, near Naples.

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While this was the first such incident to make headlines in 2024, Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper on Monday described it as just the latest of “countless” acts of vandalism at the country’s ancient sites.

Reports of people writing or carving their names into ancient walls, and even stealing bricks, stones and other pieces of Italy’s monuments, are a regular occurrence every summer, along with frequent reports of tourists swimming in fountains and climbing on statues.

READ ALSO: Anger in Italy as another tourist caught carving initials into Rome’s Colosseum

Unsurprisingly, these reports tend to trigger outraged reactions from the public in Italy and beyond, as well as from Italy’s politicians: Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano regularly posts about incidents of vandalism on social media, and on Monday he thanked law enforcement for “immediately identifying and reporting” the Dutch tourist at Herculaneum.

Sfregia pareti domus Scavi #Ercolano: immediatamente identificato e denunciato per danneggiamento e imbrattamento di opere artistiche. pic.twitter.com/fnNn9tu7NY

— Gennaro Sangiuliano (@g_sangiuliano) June 3, 2024

Following a spate of similar incidents of vandalism at Rome’s Colosseum last summer, the site’s director blamed widespread “ignorance” among tourists, saying most visitors were primarily “interested in taking selfies”.

But despite the outrage, vandalism of Italy’s historic and cultural monuments seems to continue unabated.

This isn’t because there are no laws against it: Italy’s government in January increased the potential maximum fine for anyone found guilty of causing damage to a site of historical and artistic interest from €15,000 to €40,000, or up to €60,000 for anyone damaging or destroying cultural property.

Anyone found guilty could also potentially be handed a prison sentence of up to five years, the law states.

However, the existence of laws and their application are two different things, and it’s not clear how many of those investigated by Italian police for acts of vandalism ever actually face charges.

Italian law is “very clear, and provides for severe penalties for anyone who damages or defaces monuments,” lawyer Giulia Andreozzi, based in Cagliari, told Italian media in 2023.

But tougher laws won’t necessarily help, Andreozzi said: “It would be enough to apply the rules that already exist,” but “identifying those responsible is very difficult… many are foreign tourists who leave Italian soil after a few days.”

READ ALSO: ‘Selfies and ignorance’: Italy’s Colosseum director slams badly-behaved tourists

The number of people charged with the crime of ‘defacement of cultural heritage’ has increased steadily over the past six years, according to newspaper Il Messaggero, though the report notes that many more cases likely go undetected.

There’s also the fact that the recent law change increasing penalties for those found guilty of causing damage to historical sites, under a decree known as the Ddl eco-vandali, was designed primarily for clamping down on environmental protests, rather than deterring unruly tourists.

Some types of bad behaviour seem more likely to result in an immediate fine: along with Italy’s national laws on acts of vandalism, various popular tourist hotspots have long had their own rules in place enforced by local authorities.

For instance, dozens of tourists in Rome every year receive fines of around 450 euros from city police after falling foul of a ban on taking a dip in its public fountains.