Florence’s Duomo—the city’s cathedral—is inviting would-be taggers and other graffiti artists to leave their mark on an iPad instead of the historic building’s walls.
The tablets, installed at two points in the building, have signs telling the marker brigade that “If you – virtually – leave us a message, we will preserve it: just like a masterpiece.” The tablet software allows users to choose various backgrounds such as brick or stone matching the building, and to use different markers, from pen to spray paint.
The stored artwork can be scrolled, and will be printed out for storage in the cathedral’s archives, which also has the order hiring Brunelleschi to construct the building, and the birth certificate of the women widely believed to have been the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The tablets have already been used at the nearby bell tower, also under jurisdiction of the cathedral’s Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore operating arm. In a year, 18,000 digital messages have been left, and there has been less graffiti to remove.
A statement from Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore said: “To leave a mark on monuments is an antisocial and childish behaviour, while the will of leaving a mark, a keepsake is just part of the human nature.”
