A pair of American tourists won’t be paying the ultimate price for what they did in Rome’s Colosseum, but they may have wished they had once they saw the bar bill Italian police handed them for breaking into the ancient landmark so they could drink a couple of beers.
The male tourists, aged 24 and 25, reportedly climbed onto the second tier of the 2,000-year-old monument after dark and were spotted by a passerby as they enjoyed a couple of pops. Although the young men had already polished off their drinks and departed from their scenic surroundings by the time police arrived on the scene, Italian authorities picked them up walking on the street that leads back to the city center.
“During the early hours of Monday morning some people noticed two young men drinking beer in the Colosseum, facing outwards on the second level,” a spokesperson for Rome’s carabinieri police force told CNN. “They alerted a police car nearby, which then stopped the two young men on Via dei Fori Imperiali.”
The two were handed an €800 fine, which translates to approximately $910 — or $455 per beer.
In a city like Rome where a beer typically goes for around $6, that’s a pricey pair of pints.
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