A German tourist fled after destroying a 150-year-old statue in an Italian mansion to take a commemorative photo.

According to Reuters and other sources on August 3rd (local time), two German tourists recently damaged the statues inside the residence of Aleco in northern Italy when they visited. It was reported they tried to force a picture with the stone statue, but they fell down and caused this kind of accident.

A video of them damaging the stone statue was uploaded to SNS. In the video, two tourists climbed over the flower bed and entered the fountain to take a picture with the stone statue in the center of the fountain. However, one of them took a pose hugging the stone statue and lost his center of gravity and fell down, and the sculpture fell with him and broke into pieces. Another tourist who was taking pictures can also be seen backing away in surprise.

The damaged statue is Domina, a work by Italian artist Enrico Buti that was created about 150 years ago. The sculpture is worth $218,000. The tourists reportedly left the mansion without saying a word when the statue was destroyed.

"By the time we realized it, it was too late," said Bruno Golferini, the manager of Villa Aleco. "The statue is broken into pieces, and the tiles of the fountain are also cracked, which we believe will be virtually impossible to repair," said Golferini.

Recently in Italy, there have been frequent incidents of vandalism such as tourists scribbling graffiti on many archaeological sites. Last month, a European tourist engraving his name on the ruins of the Roman Coliseum drew the ire of the Italian public.

The local police plan to identify the suspect based on surveillance camera analysis after receiving a report from the Aleko residence.