Italian last generation daubed Palazzo Vecchio
KLima activists have the facade of the famous Palazzo Vecchio in Florence smeared with paint. According to the responsible group “Ultima Generazione” (“last generation“) only a few minutes. Two of their members sprayed orange and washable paint on the entrance facade of the medieval building using fire extinguishers.
Twitter videos show what happened then: Two security forces run to stop the activists in their plans. A man in a brown leather jacket runs into the picture from the left, jumps over a hedge and vigorously pulls one of the activists away from the wall. “Stop! What the fuck are you doing?” he yells.
The man in the brown leather jacket is Dario Nardella, Mayor of the City of Florence. The fact that he was there during the action is more of a coincidence. The head of the city was apparently in the process of recording a video in the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. On the one from Italian Telegram news channel “ultimora.net” published a clip on Twitter you can see how Nardella raves about the piazza – until he suddenly turns around and starts running as if bitten by a tarantula.
“An Assault on Art, Culture and Beauty”
The visibly upset mayor then took part in the cleaning work and climbed onto scaffolding, among other things, to remove the paint with a brush and high-pressure cleaner. “These are barbarians. That’s not how you protest,” said the politician.
After the action, he tweeted, the act was an “attack on art, culture and beauty” that were defenseless at the mercy of such attacks. Even the most comprehensible thing could not justify such an action.
The “ultima generation” defended himself against the criticism on Twitter. It is better to be labeled as vandals than to “passively accept the decisions of governments that do not look beyond the 5 years of their mandate and day after day sign the condemnation of the younger generations”. According to the group, the action was directed against the climate policy of the Italian government, which from their point of view is doing too little for climate protection and missing important decisions in the fight against climate change. The palace is still the same after the paint attack, but “those who occupy it today have lost the vision of responsibility for the future of their community,” a statement said.
The Palazzo Vecchio is one of the most important buildings in the Tuscan city of Florence. The palace was built in the 14th century and originally served as the seat of the Florentine city parliament. In the 19th century it was also the seat of the Italian Chamber of Deputies for a few years. Today the building houses, among other things, the town hall, the Children’s Museum of Florence (Museo dei Ragazzi) and the magnificent Hall of the Five Hundred.
