Govt to clamp down on cultural heritage vandals

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 11 - The government is set to approve a bill introducing new measures targeting cultural heritage vandals at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
    The bill clamping down on the "destruction, dispersal, deterioration, defacement, soiling and illegal use of cultural or landscape heritage" has been proposed by the Culture Ministry as an addition to the agenda for Tuesday's meeting.
    Earlier this month Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said the government was considering making climate activists targeting monuments or works of art pay for the subsequent restorations, after members of the Ultimate Generazione (UG, Last Generation) group made the waters of one of Rome's most iconic fountains, the Barcaccia near the Spanish Steps, turn black.
    It was only the latest in a long series of acts of civic disobedience carried out by UG to highlight the need to address the climate crisis.
    "We are thinking of introducing a (new) administrative penalty," Sangiuliano said during a visit to Naples.
    "It is being studied by the technical and legal experts who work with the ministry, he added. (ANSA).