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May 22, 2023

The greenie art vandals are back, this time targeting Rome's Trevi Fountain

By Monica Showalter

Once again, we learn from greenie fanatics why we can't have nice things.

That's their message once again, based on their latest public art target, Rome's famed Trevi fountain, where seven of them dumped a black substance they claimed was "vegetable charcoal," potentially doing real damage:

Climate activists in Italy blackened on Sunday Rome's famed Trevi Fountain (also known as Fontana Di Trevi) with charcoal, calling for an immediate halt to public subsidies to fossil fuels. They said the climate crisis is the reason for the latest flash floods in the country.

The floods in the region of Emilia-Romagna in the northeast of Italy have thus far killed 14 people, devastating much of the hit area.

Italy's Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) climate group said they poured charcoal diluted with water into the fountain. 

Italian police intervened soon afterwards, taking the activists away.

The 18th-century fountain in Rome attracts millions of tourists annually. 

Here they are, mouths open wide, in all their glory:

Lovely logic they've got, too.  The country is experiencing floods, so ruining an intricate old fountain and creating extra work for the citizens of Rome to clean up is just the thing to fix global warming, right, bozos?  It's not only stupid logic on its face; it doesn't help that global warming has nothing to do with why Italy is experiencing extreme weather.

The mayor of Rome said the city had to waste 300,000 gallons of fresh water just to flush these greenies' "deposits" out, which is not a small thing in a Mediterranean country where dry conditions are normal and water is not to be wasted.  It's especially bad during a time of flooding, when clean water must be conserved. 

The famed Fontana di Trevi is one of Rome's most beautiful and exquisite landmarks.  It's public art like nobody else's.

Here's some drone footage if you haven't experienced it.

The marble masterpiece near the foot of the Spanish Steps of Rome was initially drawn out by 18th-century sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who was one of the greatest sculptors of all time, and flawlessly executed by Nicola Salvi and several other master sculptors after him.  It is made of marble and has seen numerous cleanings, restorations, and lighting additions (by the House of Fendi, and yes, they did enhance the beauty of the magnificent presentation), in a bid to ensure that the masterpiece will be part of Rome for generations to come.

It was featured in famous movies such as Roman Holiday, Three Coins in the Fountain, and La Dolce Vita, and it has a tradition for tourists that says that if you throw coins in the fountain, you will one day return to Rome. 

It's special to me, because as a college student in the early 1980s, I once got lost in Rome.  It was the pre-internet era so I found myself wandering around and wondering where I was, maddeningly frustrated at finding nothing familiar, and then I walked into this fountain.  I'd never heard of it; I just knew by looking at it that it was special.  I forgot I was lost and just drew it in.  After a while, I inched back to my student penzione near the Vatican, but I knew I wanted to come back to it.  I didn't know it was famous or anything; I just thought it was gorgeous, all-encompassing, an experience in itself.  It was a glorious way to learn about something, by literally walking into it, and then wondering what it was.

But the beauty and heritage of the whole artwork meant nothing to these crazed activists, who are severely education-deprived, so into it they dumped their garbage, wrecking the water and potentially damaging the porous marble, which should never be touched.

A few days ago, I visited the Meijers Gardens sculpture park in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  There were some new big white marble bas relief sculptures by a Barcelona artist on the wall near the entry.  It was natural to want to touch it, because the marble was so pure that it was impossible to tell what it was.  Was it plastic? Textile?  Paper?  I wanted to touch it in order to know.  But as I approached it, I could see that the curators had carefully fenced it off and urged viewers not to touch it because the material was so porous that the oil and dirt on people's hands could damage it.  I learned that it was marble.  The art park provided big blocks of marble in the various textures seen on the sculpture on the table so people could touch the material itself without damaging any of the artwork.

Now we learn that these clowns have dumped black goo into the water around a truly great pure marble sculpture, and yes, they could be damaging that porous material.  They probably thought they weren't, since they claimed to have used vegan charcoal, but what the heck do they know?  The Greenpeace idiots damaged the famed Nazca Lines in Peru through one of their stunts, leaving their dirty footprints all over the fragile ancient designs on the earth's floor, just like some clown who stomps on a painting.  Oops, sorry 'bout that.  The Peruvians made them do a stretch in jail for that.

That's because the art wasn't theirs; it belonged to the people of Peru in every generation.  And this one belongs to the people of Rome.  These jerks were expropriating it for their own greenie cause.  It's time for the Italians to tell them they can't have it.

 Image: Twitter screen shot.

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