17 influencers are accused of smashing a 150-year-old statue worth $218K while filming at a fancy Italian villa
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- A group of German tourists toppled a 150-year-old statue at an Italian villa, the manager said.
- They were influencers recording social media content, according to Italian media reports.
- The statue was worth approximately $218,800, the villa's manager said, per Reuters.
A group of young German tourists toppled a 150-year-old statue at a villa in northern Italy, the villa's manager told Insider.
According to Italian media reports, the guests at Villa Alceo were influencers who messed around with the historic statue while shooting content for social media.
The statue in question, the 5.5-feet-tall "Domina" statue by artist Enrico Butti, crashed to the ground after two members of the group climbed into a fountain to hug it, said the villa's manager Bruno Golferini.
Another person used a stick to push it over, Golferini said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Four people were watching, and recorded it on their phones, the manager said, per the Italian media outlet TGcom24.
The incident, which saw the statue shatter into many fragments, happened on Monday, according to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
Villa Alceo is some 30 miles from Milan and was built in 1870 by a local noble family. They would host Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini there, the villa's website said.
The "Domina" statue there was worth around 200,000 euros, or approximately $218,800, Golferini said, according to Reuters.
He said repairs would be difficult because the statue's collapse also damaged the tiles in the fountain.
The incident was captured on the villa's surveillance cameras, Reuters said.
Golferini said he has since lodged a complaint with police in Viggiu, Italy, against all 17 German tourists who were renting the villa. Police confirmed to Insider that a police report had been filed.
Following the incident, the group left Italy on Monday, Reuters reported. The manager told Insider in an email that the guests have not apologized and have not offered any compensation for the damage.
"Domina was in a way the woman who protected the villa," said Golferini, according to Reuters. "Sadly, there are these ignorant people who do these kind of things."
The incident comes after a string of acts of vandalism on historic sites in Italy this summer. In recent weeks, there have been several instances of people vandalizing the Colosseum in Rome.