Italian officials hunt for tourist who ‘mimicked sex’ acts on Florence Bacchus statue

ROME - Italian officials are trying to identify a young woman who was filmed kissing and rubbing her body against a statue of Bacchus, the god of wine and sensuality, in Florence over the weekend.

The country’s culture ministry and officials in Florence have expressed their fury over the incident after pictures went viral on social media, with the Florence mayor’s office calling it an act that “mimicked sex.”

Florence City Hall said the tourist had not been identified yet and suggested that she was “presumably in a state of inebriation”.

They said that if identified, she would be fined and could be banned from the city for life, in line with an ordinance that prohibits any sort of abuse of cultural heritage in the country.

The statue is a replica of the original created in the 16th century by sculptor Giambologna, who was influenced by Hellenistic sculpture and the works of Michelangelo and who settled in Florence in 1552.

His original Bacchus is kept in the Bargello Museum in the centre of Florence. The replica stands on a street corner near the Ponte Vecchio bridge.

The act has sparked a wide range of reaction on social media platform X – from outrage to ironic amusement.

Misbehaving tourists have been plaguing Italian authorities for years now.

Back in 2022, a man was charged after a Maserati was driven down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps. That same year, tourists were fined for surfing up Venice’s Grand Canal.

In 2023, a group of young tourists posing for pictures to post on social media were accused of toppling a valuable statue at a villa in northern Italy.

Back in Florence in the same year, a tourist was detained, accused of damaging a statue in the 16th-century Fountain of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria. CNN