Graffiti News
The restorer scrubbing graffiti off Rome's monuments
The 28-year-old restorer scrubbing graffiti off Rome
Valerio Tuveri, a 28-year-old architectural restorer, has given himself the job of taking spray paint off Rome's walls. Euronews reported his work on 31 July 2026, in a piece by Ilaria Federico with AFP. Tuveri uses a high-pressure sand blaster and protective equipment, lifting the paint while leaving the stone underneath intact. His recent work included clearing fresh graffiti from the newly restored walls of Villa Sciarra.
He is known on Instagram and TikTok as the guy who cleans Rome. Filming each job before and after has widened it beyond one person: according to Euronews, residents have begun joining the clean-ups.
What he objects to, and what he does not
Tuveri's target is indiscriminate tagging rather than everything painted on a wall. He told Euronews: "I decided to take this path, this 'battle', against graffiti because Rome is, in my opinion, the most beautiful city in the world, but at the same time the most vandalised city in Europe. There is meaningless writing everywhere: on monuments, private homes, cars and shutters."
The line he draws is about place. "Graffiti should bring art to places that don't have any," he said. "But if Rome is already art, what's the point? That's the problem."
Plenty of people disagree with him. A long-standing argument inside graffiti culture is that the surfaces of a city are public, and that the power to decide what hangs on them is already distributed unequally. Wallscape does not settle that argument. It is worth being precise about what the two sides are actually arguing over.
Italian law treats heritage surfaces separately
According to Euronews, damaging monuments or property of significant historical, archaeological or artistic value in Italy can carry up to one year of imprisonment or roughly 2,000 euros in fines where the damage harms cultural heritage. Courts may also order confiscation of property.
Tuveri does not think that goes far enough. "You can tell people whatever you want, but when you hit them in the wallet, they start to feel it," he told Euronews. "We need harsh penalties, hefty fines and lots of cameras."
The wall decides the outcome more often than the paint does
The street-art argument is usually framed as art versus vandalism. In practice the thing that determines what happens next is rarely the image. It is the surface the image is on.
The same piece produces three different outcomes on a legal wall, on a privately owned shutter, and on a listed stone facade. The first two turn on the owner's consent. The third is governed by heritage law whether the owner consents or not. Old stone and lime render are also porous, so paint travels below the surface. Removal is therefore not washing paint off; it is a restorer deciding how much of the original material to take away with it. That is why Tuveri varies pressure and abrasive from wall to wall.
The distinction matters to painters as well. The harder a city protects its heritage surfaces, the more a legal wall or a commissioned mural is worth. In a city as old as Rome the two are less rivals than preconditions for each other.
What gets removed still belongs in the record
Work on the street has a short life, and nothing is filed when it goes. That is true of a commissioned mural and of a tag. Without a photograph, a location and a date, nobody can confirm what was on a given wall a few months later.
Wallscape's map and feed exist to hold that record. If you pass a piece in Trastevere or along the Tiber, posting it with its location adds one more entry to that wall's timeline. What other people have posted is in the feed and in news.
A record does not take a side. It only makes it possible to say later what was there, whether it survived or not.