A tourist broke a historic statue in Brussels one day after it was unveiled to the public following a 3-year restoration project that cost more than $18,000

• A video showed a tourist climbing on top of a statue and breaking off a piece.
• Police later arrested the tourist at a fast food joint.

A tourist climbed onto a historic statue in Brussels, Belgium, on Sunday and accidentally broke a portion of it, Brussels police told Insider in a statement. The incident was first reported by the local newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.

In a video posted by Het Nieuwsblad, a man in a white shirt and a pair of black shorts was shown trying to get down from the statue. The man is from Ireland, police said in the statement.

Later in the video, a piece of the statue — which the man was shown holding — broke off and fell to the ground. The man was then shown walking away from the statue.

The statue, which comprises a lion and a figure of a man with a torch in hand, is a part of the Brussels Stock Exchange building, the police said. The tourist had broken the statue just a day after it was shown to the public, following a three-year restoration project that cost 17,600 euros, or around $18,750, per Het Nieusblad.

Police later arrested the man at a fast food joint that was located near the statue, according to Het Niewsblad. The Brussels Stock Exchange said it expects the man to pay for the broken statue's restoration, per the report.

"The police arrived at the scene and found the tourist a bit further away. He was temporarily held in police custody and will face criminal charges," Brussels police told Insider, declining to reveal details about the man's identity.

Nel Vandevennet, who was part of the team that renovated the statue, said that the repairs are going to take a few weeks or even months. "We thought the sculptures would enjoy greater respect. We just think it's very sad this happened," he told the Belgian broadcaster VRT.

"The repairs are going to cost a lot of money because the work will have to be done by real craftsmen," Vandevennet said.

It's not the first time a tourist has misbehaved overseas. In October last year, an American tourist smashed two sculptures and hurled them into the ground during a visit to the Vatican Museum. In July, a tourist defaced part of the Colosseum in Rome and used a key to carve "Ivan+Haley 23" on a wall.