An 80-year-old man has told police he was “wrong” to drive down Rome’s famed Spanish Steps, after firefighters had to recover his vehicle from the landmark in the early hours of Tuesday.
The man was not injured in the incident but he was nonetheless taken to the hospital, where he tested negative for both drug and alcohol consumption, city police said in a statement.
The driver, who has not been identified, told officers he was “going to work” and had taken a wrong turn, according to Italian media reports. It is unclear if he was using a GPS device.
The gray Mercedes-Benz A-Class car got stuck halfway down the 18th-century staircase around 4 a.m. on Tuesday, the Italian Fire Brigade said in a statement. The car had been stopped by police officers who were patrolling the area.
The fire department said it had to use a crane at the foot of the steps to lift the vehicle off the stairway. Some damage to the vehicle was visible, but it is unclear whether that was the result of Tuesday’s incident.
The steps are currently closed to the public. The normal procedure when Rome’s historic monuments are involved in an incident is for archaeologists to inspect them for damage.
The man had a valid driver’s license, according to Italian media. Under Italian law, drivers over the age of 80 are obliged to renew their license every two years and undergo a medical examination, which includes basic cognition questions.
Back in 2022, a Saudi man tangled with the law after he drove a Maserati down the Spanish Steps. He was charged with aggravated damage to cultural heritage and monuments after the car caused fractures to the 16th and 29th steps of the right-hand flight rising up from the Piazza di Spagna.
That same year two American tourists were fined and briefly banned from Rome’s city center after damaging the steps with electric scooters.
The steps owe their name to the Spanish Embassy to the Holy See, which is hosted in a palazzo in the square below.
A two-year, 1.5 million-euro ($1.7 million) restoration of the landmark — which has appeared in numerous movies, most notably 1953’s “Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck — was completed in 2015.
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