Bernini's celebrated Roman sculpture "The Elephant and Obelisk" has been damaged again

Bernini's celebrated Roman sculpture "The Elephant and Obelisk" has been damaged again. The marble elephant, created in 1667 to a design by Bernini and executed by his pupil Ercole Ferrata, stands in the Piazza della Minerva beside the Pantheon. The elephant, bearing an ancient Egyptian obelisk on its back, is one of the symbols of the city.

On Monday evening, staff of the cultural heritage protection service discovered a broken-off left tusk at the base of the sculpture, and beside it a recovered fragment about 11 cm long. For the moment the police are going through CCTV footage to establish whether this was a deliberate act of vandalism or whether the damage was caused by the weather after prolonged rain.

Italy's Minister of Culture, Alessandro Giuli, condemned the incident as an "absurd act of barbarism", noting that it is unacceptable for the national artistic heritage to be allowed to suffer serious damage yet again.

This is not the first such incident: a similar fragment of the tusk was broken off and found in 2016, and was then restored in the course of restoration work

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