A Valentine’s Day storm sent the Lovers’ Arch in southern Italy crashing into the Adriatic Sea.
Officials did not mention any injuries from the collapse.
The arch was in Melendugno, 220 miles east of Naples in the heel of Italy’s peninsula. The storm that buffeted and ultimately brought down the rock formation was the remnant of a Mediterranean cyclone, officials for Italy’s Puglia region said.
“We have lost a symbolic natural feature of our land, of our region, known to most as the Lovers’ Arch, coincidentally falling on Valentine’s Day. We have also lost a tourist attraction and a stretch of rock that, due to its unique shape created over time, represented a glimpse of beauty in this area,” Puglia Regional President Antonio Decaro said Monday.
Mr. Decaro added that regional officials would work on measures to help mitigate the natural processes that caused the collapse of the Lover’s Arch and that could cause other disasters.
The naturally formed arch had drawn pairs of lovers since the 1700s, according to CNN.
Melendugno Mayor Maurizio Cisternino said the arch’s collapse was “a blow to the heart,” according to local newspaper Corriere Salentino, adding that “nature has reclaimed the arch just as it created it.”
Natural erosion forms and eventually weakens such rock formations. The famous Azure Window in Malta seen in the first season of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and in multiple movies collapsed into the ocean under similar circumstances in 2017, according to the BBC.
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