Dublin City Council plans to place flower beds around the plinth holding the statue of Molly Malone to prevent tourists from rubbing its bosom. <\/p>\n
The statue on Suffolk Street has suffered discolouration to its breasts due to a recently contrived \u201ctradition\u201d suggesting touching them brings good luck. It is a popular place to take photographs, with members of the public climbing on to the unprotected plinth.<\/p>\n
The council had stewards in position for a week in May asking people not to interact with the sculpture. However, the stewards, while successfully in discouraging people, cannot be in place around the clock, and touching resumed as soon as they were absent.<\/p>\n
The bronze statue has lost its patina in the chest area, exposing the structure to further damage. Climbing on the plinth has also slightly dislodged the pins that hold it in place.<\/p>\n
Council arts officer Ray Yeates said there are divided opinions about how important it is to prevent the so-called tourist tradition. \u201cSome people are very upset and others thinks \u2018what matter?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
However, the damage to the statue has prompted council action.<\/p>\n
Noting the difficulty of changing visitors\u2019 behaviour, Mr Yeates said: \u201cWe are exploring other avenues of protection for the sculpture, including installing flower beds around the base.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the next six weeks the site will be covered in a shroud as the statue\u2019s finish is restored and the plinth secured. Flower boxes will be put in position, making it more difficult to reach the seafood seller\u2019s chest. <\/p>\n
Overall the works are expected to cost in the region of \u20ac20,000.<\/p>\n
If this is not enough to discourage visitors from damaging the statue, \u201cwe will try something else\u201d, Mr Yeates said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dublin City Council plans to place flower beds around the plinth holding the statue of Molly Malone to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":85916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,58048,1033,4735,171,58046,58047,5331,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-85915","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-breasts","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-dublin","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-molly-malone","15":"tag-statue","16":"tag-tourism","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114902584653953386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}