Humans have a long, rich history of destroying the private parts of great works of art. Famously, the statue of the fictional Irish folk-song character Molly Malone has had her ample bosom rubbed by tourists so often that her tits are now a completely different color from the rest of the statue. In that same proud tradition of the public’s immature fascination with the genitals on public art, The Guardian reports that a famous bull mosaic in Milan now needs its balls restored after years of tourists dancing on them for good luck.
The mosaic with the faded testicles resides within the historic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a massive 19th-century shopping area near Milan’s Duomo cathedral. The mosaic is simple enough: it depicts a bull that represents the city of Turin, as it proudly stands on its hind legs, exposing its substantial set of balls. For decades, tourists have joined in on the local tradition/superstition claiming that spinning three times on the bull’s balls with the heel of your foot will bring you good luck.
It’s a goofy, immature tradition that sounds like a fun local superstition to partake in that makes for some great Instagram fodder, like kissing the Blarney Stone in Ireland, until you realize that millions of tourists have been stomping and twisting on this fake bull’s balls for so long that they don’t even look like balls anymore. They’ve been erased by decades of pirouetting.
The Rest of the Bull Is Fine, People Only Stomp on the Testicles
City officials say that the stomp and twisted ritual has worn down the pink tiles that form the bull’s balls so severely that the balls and balls alone need to be restored. Work on the testicles began this week, as artisan Gianluca Galli made impressions of the original dangly Bettes, then used epoxy resin to fill in the old balls instead of the original lime. To withstand perhaps several more centuries of tourists stopping on this poor bull’s nut sack, he used sand mortar to glue them down.
The onlooking tourists, disappointed that they did not have a tile bull whose balls they could stomp all over for luck, instead crunched down and spun on a nearby mosaic of a she-wolf that represents Rome.
You can’t give the people the opportunity to stomp out the nuts of a fake animal and then suddenly take it away from them. The people demand to crush an animal mosaic, and they will get their jollies one way or another.
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