A 27-year-old Dutch man has been arrested in Italy for defacing an ancient Roman monument.

Visitors alerted guards after seeing the man scrawl a graffiti tag in black marker pen on a wall in the historic city of Herculaneum, near Naples, on Sunday.

The city was destroyed in 79AD by the same volcanic eruption that consumed Pompeii and is now an archaeological site and tourist attraction. Many of its remains are well preserved under the lava.

A spokesman for the Italian culture ministry condemned the vandalism and vowed to prosecute the man with the full force of the law.

“Once again our cultural possessions have been the target of crude and idiotic behaviour,” the ministry said. “Our heritage, our beauty and our identity have been damaged, which is why this act must be heavily punished.”

€40,000 fine

Earlier this year the Italian parliament increased the maximum fine for damaging a historic monument from €15,000 to €40,000.

The move was a reaction to a series of protests by climate change activists at sites including the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.

It is not the first time Dutch visitors have been prosecuted for damaging cultural heritage in Italy. In 2015 Feyenoord fans caused an estimated €8 million of damage when they went on the rampage through Rome before a Europa League match against AS Roma.

More than 40 Dutch supporters were given community sentences and Feyenoord fans have been banned from travelling to European fixtures in the Italian capital ever since.