The measure will see fines for those who despoil art and heritage in Italy in order to pay for clean-up and repairs.

The cabinet approved a bill “in the area of the destruction, dispersal, deterioration, disfiguring, and defacing for illicit purposes of cultural and landscape heritage,” sources said after the cabinet meeting.

The bill, proposed by the Culture Ministry, envisages fines of 20-60,000 euros plus criminal sanctions for those who destroy cultural heritage and other administrative sanctions.

There will be fines of 10-40,000 euros for those who deface monuments.

Proceeds from the fines will be used by the culture ministry to clean and repair the monuments, the bill says.

Earlier this month Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano said the government was considering making climate activists targeting monuments or works of art pay for the subsequent restorations.

His comments came after members of the Ultimate Generazione (UG, Last Generation) group made the waters of one of Rome's most iconic fountains, the Barcaccia near the Spanish Steps, turn black.

It was only the latest in a long series of acts of civil disobedience carried out by UG to highlight the need to address the climate crisis.

“We are thinking of introducing a (new) administrative penalty,” Sangiuliano said during a visit to Naples.

“It is being studied by the technical and legal experts who work with the ministry.”

The Rome fountain action was part of UG's ‘Let's Not Pay For Fossil Fuels’ campaign condemning public support and investment in the fossil fuels that are the driving force of the climate crisis.

Last month UG sprayed orange paint over the walls of Palazzo Vecchio, the home of Florence's town hall, as part of the campaign.

The city's mayor, Dario Nardella, was hailed as a hero by some after he rugby-tackled one of the activists involved and even lent a hand with the clean-up operation.

Other protests have included splashing paint over the front of the Senate in Rome, the La Scala opera house and the Vittorio Emanuele II statue in Milan, protestors gluing themselves to Botticelli's Spring at the Uffizi and the Laocoon statue in the Vatican, blocking the Mt Blanc Tunnel, throwing flour over an Andy Warhol car in Milan and throwing soup onto a Van Gogh in Rome.

UG is part of the A22 network of climate civil-disobedience groups active in several countries, such as Just Stop Oil in the UK, Stop Old Growth in Canada, France's Derniere Renovation and Declare Emergency in the United States.

ANSA