La Spezia, 41-year-old man sets Basaldella fountain on fire to celebrate New Year's Eve. Immediately caught

He found no better way to celebrate 2021: in La Spezia, during the afternoon of December 31, a 41-year-old local man set fire to the Fountain of Voices in Brin Square, a 1956 work by one of the most important Italian sculptors of the 20th century, Mirko Basaldella (Udine, 1910 - Cambridge, 1969). The man poured flammable liquid into the fountain’s water and then set it on fire: flames then erupted on the surface of the water, which the man observed for a few moments before walking away.

The height of the flames, however, immediately attracted the attention of the inhabitants of the square, who alerted the Carabinieri: thanks to the surveillance cameras in Brin Square, it was possible to immediately trace the perpetrator, a man from La Spezia who was already known to the police. Immediately caught, he was taken to the barracks where he claimed to have set fire to the Basaldella fountain to celebrate the end of 2020. The man is now charged with aggravated criminal damage. Estimates of the damage the 41-year-old man did to the work are currently being made.

The Basaldella fountain, probably the most important of those built in La Spezia from the 20th century onward, consists of a basin over which rises a totem pole, seven and a half meters high and covered in glass paste mosaic, representing the voices of the sea not far away.

Pictured: left, the Fountain of Voices (ph. Credit Lazzarotti Restauri); right, surveillance camera image showing the fountain fire.

La Spezia, 41-year-old man sets Basaldella fountain on fire to celebrate New Year's Eve. Immediately caught

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