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5 months ago
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This is the moment a parkour runner faced instant karma after he damaged a UNESCO World Heritage Site building in Italy during a rooftop jump and the masonry gave way beneath him.
The unidentified free runner destroyed part of a wall in the ancient city of Matera, in the country's south, with his leap before sending he crashed to the ground, grabbing his ankle in agony.
In a video of the stunt gone wrong, which emerged on social media on June 12, everyone appears to be speaking in English accents, with the injured man crying out: 'Oh no, f***.'
Onlookers react with cries of 'ooh, f***', *ooh, s***' and 'are you OK?'
The footage shows a man in a long-sleeved green top and black trousers leaping from one roof to another, then jumping one-footed onto a narrow stretch of stonework sticking out from a wall.
A parkour runner was filmed jumping from one roof to another in a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Matera, Italy
The free runner then leapt one-footed onto a narrow outcrop on the side of a wall to propel him to the next building, but the stonework crumbled beneath him
The man fell to the floor and grabbed his right ankle in pain
It is understood that he had intended to spring off the ledge onto another roof, but as he landed on it, it crumbled beneath him and he fell down on the hard ground.
The extreme runner can then be seen sitting against a wall in agony and grabbing his right ankle.
The historic cliffside city in the Basilicata region has been a protected UNESCO site since 1993 and has been occupied by humans since the Paleolithic period, the early Stone Age.
It was evacuated in stages between the 1950s and 1970s for safety reasons.
The shocking images were shared online by choreographer Luca Tommassini, who said angrily: 'It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. How dare you?'
Mr Tommassini added: 'Do you know where you are and what you are touching?
'Matera should not be used as a parkour park, that stone could have been there when America was discovered or even before.'
It is unclear if police are investigating the free runners seen in the footage.
The incident is the latest example of foreign visitors enraging locals.
A sign made with a black marker on the wall of a domus of the Herculaneum Archaeological Park, in Ercolano, Naples, Italy
A tourist sparked fury in 2023 by carving names into the stone walls of the 1,937-year-old Colosseum using a set of keys
Earlier this month, a Dutch tourist was arrested for defacing the Domus excavations that survived the eruption of Mount Vesuvius near Naples.
The unnamed 27-year old man was held after staff discovered graffiti on a frescoed wall in an ancient Roman villa in Herculaneum.
Italian police said in a statement that the graffiti, which had been made with a black permanent marker, matched the man's signature.
In 2023, two tourists etched their names into the wall of the 2,000-year-old Colosseum.
Also in that year tourists were caught covering a historical Italian landmark with football graffiti.
Two German men were detained by police after they allegedly used black spray paint to write 'DKS 1860' on the 460-year-old columns of Florence's iconic Vasari Corridor.
The corridor connects the city's treasured Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace and was originally built for the powerful Medici family.
In recent years, holidaymakers have also sparked outrage by plunging into ancient fountains to cool off in the summer.
English (US)