Man taking selfie breaks 400-year-old staute

A foreign student on a mission to take the ultimate selfie has broken the leg off a 400-year-old statue in Italy as he sat on it, according to witnesses.

The accidental act of vandalism took place at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and was discovered on Tuesday, the Corriere Della Sera reports.

The foreign student allegedly scaled the Drunken Satyr to take a photo of himself on it when the leg snapped off and broke in pieces as it hit the floor.

However, there is no video evidence to corroborate the eyewitness accounts as CCTV cameras installed in the academy's hallway were not working at the time.

The academy's director Franco Marrocco said he believes the destruction was "an accident"

"The statue was assembled in pieces and the block was already partly detached: we had planned the restoration," he said.

With no footage of the unexpected amputation it is unlikely that the person responsible will be apprehended.

Fortunately the Greco-Roman statue is only a copy of an work found at Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo around 400 years ago.

The original Drunken Satyr is housed in the Glyptothek museum in Germany.

Source: Corriere Della Sera

Author: Martin Zavan, Approving editor: Matthew Henry