The Duomo in Florence was constructed upon the remains of the fourth century cathedral of Santa Reparata. At first, it was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296, but the massive dome, the main feature, was created by the plans of Filippo Brunelleschi.

Today, on the stone walls in the cathedral, people have written “we were here”. Which is mocking the plastic sign above the graffiti. On other parts of the cathedral, tourists over the decades had vandalized the walls of the monument with political slogans, declarations of love and their feelings.

One vandalization stated how much they hated the stairs…

Or would be someone writing to their true love. Jackie and Denise wanted to make it clear that they had visited Florence’s bell tower by writing their names in a romantic fashion in dark red pencil on the 18th century bronze bell.

Today, there are now three computer tablets in the bell room as the Giotto’s bell tower in hope that visitors will leave their marks virtually instead of on the walls. Florence tries very hard to prohibit tourists from around the world to stop using the city’s monuments as a personal time capsule, but it is difficult to control. It took Beatrice Agostini, the institution architect that controls and preserves this tourist attraction, an entire three months with nine restoration experts to scrub off all of the markings on the walls in the tower using lasers and solvent gels.

It is definitely something Agostini and her team of nine did not want to have to repeat. After scrubbing all of the graffiti off the walls along the 414 step climb to the bell tower, they placed another three tablets there trusting that the visitors won’t damage the monument by vandalizing again. The messages that have been virtually written at the Duomo will be stored on a website and archived, for eternity, online. On a large billboard at the entrance of the bell tower, it explains in both English and Italian that all marks will be removed. The people still wanted the tourists to leave their testimony without smearing the walls all over again.