A 40-year-old Austrian tourist was caught carving three initials into Rome's Colosseum with a Swiss army knife, Italian police said Tuesday.
A Colosseum official reported the woman to police after spotting her carving the initials ''M.D.S.'' into a pillar of the 2,000-year-old amphitheatre last week.
The woman faces charges of damage to a building of historical and artistic value, police said.
It was the latest in a long list of similar acts of vandalism at the UNESCO World Heritage site, which is visited by more than five million people a year.
A 33-year-old Bulgarian footballer was reported to police in mid-July for carving his initials into a ground floor pillar of the Colosseum with a coin.
The man plays for a Russian first division team and was on holiday in the Italian capital with his girlfriend.
Also in July, a Lebanese tourist was caught committing the same offence. In March, two Californian women, aged 21 and 25, were arrested after carving a J and N into a brick wall on the first floor of the west side of the Colosseum.
Based on punishments that have been handed out in the past, the tourists could face five-figure fines if convicted of vandalising the iconic monument.
A 42-year-old Russian tourist, Akaev Kazbek, was given a four-month suspended prison sentence and fined 20,000 euros last November after carving a large letter 'K' into a wall of the Colosseum with an awl.
