Romanian tourist arrested after trying to steal chunks of marble from Acropolis

A Romanian tourist was arrested at the Athens Acropolis Tuesday after allegedly trying to steal pieces of marble from the ancient Greek landmark.

The 36-year-old man was caught after another tourist noticed him placing his hands on a section of the Propylaea — the remains of the gateway leading into the Acropolis — in a way that looked suspicious, according to Greek news outlet Proto Thema.

When approached by police, the tourist claimed not to know taking the stone pieces was illegal and added they had already broken off the structure.

The alleged thief was charged with theft, and will likely be prosecuted under Greece’s antiquities law which stipulates that all ancient cultural objects and property belong to the state.

He is due to report to local prosecutors on Wednesday as part of standard procedure for such crimes, according to Iefimerida.

Tourists have been causing problems at the ancient site this summer as tourists flock back across the globe following the end of the pandemic.

Hoping to preserve the ancient site — which sees up to 23,000 visitors per day — Greek officials have begun rolling out measures to limit the number of tourists who can visit, according to the New York Times.

First rolled out in September, those measures included admitting people to the site in hourly time slots from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The incident at the Acropolis was far from the first time a tourist was caught defaming priceless landmarks this summer.

Just last week, a drunken Irish tourist broke a statue of a lion outside the Brussels Stock Exchange in Belgium while trying to climb on top of it.

The statue had just gone through a three-year $150 million renovation, and the damage cost by the tourist is expected to cost about $19,000.

Days earlier in Florence, Italy, a tourist climbed onto the Fountain of Neptune for a photo and broke a piece off the 16th-century statue. Repairs for those damages are expected to run over $5,000.

In June, a smiling tourist kicked off the summer season by carving his and his girlfriend’s name into the wall of the Colosseum in Rome.

That man, Ivan Dimitrov, a 27-year-old Bulgarian-born fitness trainer living in England, later claimed he didn’t know how old the landmark was.

“It is with deep embarrassment that only after what regrettably happened did I learn of the antiquity of the monument,” Dimitrov wrote in an apology letter.