Venice will charge to enter the city from 2023 0:58
(CNN) --
Summer in the Northern Hemisphere is heating up, travel chaos reigns and tourists are determined to have a "revenge trip."
And in Venice, that was conjugated in a series of tourists with undesirable behavior.
In the last two weeks there have been a series of tourist transgressions in the city, from tourists who swam naked in the canals preserved by UNESCO to committing acts of vandalism in one of the emblematic churches of the city.
On the night of May 15-16, the facade of the Church of the Redeemer, designed by Renaissance "architect" Andrea Palladio, and home to perhaps the city's most famous celebration, was vandalized.
Vandals painted part of the façade pink.
Credit: Luigi Brugnaro
One part of the facade, built of white Istrian stone, from what was the Venetian empire when the church was built, was painted pink, with what looked like an equation scrawled on top.
The three square meter area is located under the statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, just to the right of the entrance as you climb the famous white stone staircase.
A local who tried to clean it is said to have caused further damage by using water, which helped the color soak deeper into the porous stone.
Now government-hired art restorers are taking care of it.
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This fact adds to the vandalism of another church in Venice, Sant'Antonin, which was painted a few days before, according to the local newspaper La Nuova.
Meanwhile, another self-described artist poured bright blue paint onto a bridge on the Fondamenta dei Garzotti, one of the main access streets to the city from the train station.
He seemed to spell the word "freedom."
The blue letters seemed to spell the word "Freedom."
And on Thursday night, two American tourists decided to dive naked into a canal in the residential neighborhood of Castello.
Two American tourists swam naked in a canal.
Credit: CNN
Surprised locals watched them swim for about five minutes in the water, into which nearby houses dump their sewage, before drying off and returning to their Airbnb.
Surveillance cameras located in the vicinity have helped resolve some of the questions.
The authorities have already located the person responsible for the vandalism in the Redentore church, accompanied by two friends.
Fondamenta Garzotti before the vandals arrived.
Credit: Lotti Fabio/Adobe Stock
Those responsible for the vandalism were part of a street art event that was taking place that same day, according to the city council.
Authorities scoured social media to see who the culprit might be, and found a street artist whose signature is creating designs that resemble equations.
Police are now seeking security camera footage of people who swam naked in the canal.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro described the vandalism as a "scar" on the basilica, calling it a "symbolic place of Venetian traditions".
"Those responsible must not go unpunished, they must pay!" he wrote on Twitter, calling for more powers to be given to justices of the peace.
Tweeting a photo of the damage to the Marin River bridge, he added: "It will take hours to restore at a cost we can't yet calculate. We should keep these barbarians in a cell for at least a couple of nights."
"Enough of this chaos," the mayor wrote after another incident: the destruction of a religious statue in Marghera, on mainland Venice.
"The city must be respected."
VandalismVenice