Breaking: Mystery vandals cut top from Vatican obelisk
April 01, 2025
The tip of the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square has been reported missing, leaving Vatican officials unable to explain its disappearance.
Visitors to the Vatican noticed on Tuesday morning that about ten feet of stone had been removed from the top of the obelisk, along with the bronze cross that was added as a spire in 1586, when the obelisk—which had been brought to Rome by the Emperor Caligula in 37 AD—was moved to its current location in St. Peter’s Square.
The removal of the tip evidently occurred sometime Monday night, and drone footage showed that the granite had been nearly cut. But experts could not explain how, or why, it had been done.
Captain Lorenzo Bellafigura, who led the Italian state-police detail patrolling St. Peter’s Square on Monday night, reported no unusual activity during the night. He recalled that sometime shortly after midnight, a group of young women had spent some time speaking to them. “They were tourists,” he said, “and Pope Francis has always said that he is grateful for our hospitality toward strangers.”
Rocco Calcare, whose Rome contracting company specializes in moving stone structures, explained the difficulty of removing a piece of the obelisk:
I would use a crane—maybe two—and it would take a very powerful blade. It would take a full crew. It would be noisy. It would be messy. It would take several hours at least.
When told that there was no debris around the base of the monument on Tuesday morning, Calcare responded: “That is simply unbelievable. I do not understand.”
Calcare revealed that he had recently been contacted by a Russian billionaire, Andrei Vzyatochnichestvo, who was looking for an ancient structure to serve as the centerpiece of a garden in an English country home he had recently purchased. “You could ask him about this,” he said.
One veteran journalist suggested that there might be a simpler explanation for the mystery, pointing out that the story broke on April Fool’s Day.
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