A woman crashed into Venice's Rialto Bridge and damaged a marble balustrade on it with the back of a cargo motorboat she had stolen, according to ANSA. The heavy motorboat's stern struck three bollards, breaking the deck.

The young woman, a Tunisian with a criminal record, meanwhile, managed to get off the vessel and flee, but was stopped by local police officers, who rushed to the scene following a call from witnesses.

The woman took command of the boat after she was spotted trying to steal some packages from it, police said. She was arrested after hitting the bridge.

The vessel was moored on the opposite side of the Grand Canal, beneath the Riva del Palazzo dei Camerlenghi in Rialto, home of the Court of Auditors.

It was temporarily unattended because the shipping company's two workers were busy making deliveries, when the young woman climbed aboard and crossed the canal at high speed, crashing into the opposite side, knocking its stern against the railing at the foot of the Rialto Bridge.

The vessel was also damaged, but not enough to compromise its buoyancy.

The vessel was quickly moved and safely moored beneath the Rialto Bridge.

Around the railing is the terrace of a small restaurant that seats about a dozen tables in the summer, and the stretch of water is heavily trafficked by motorboats and gondolas.

Miraculously, no other boats were encountered, and there were no injuries.

The balustrade, the landward extension of the bridge, was restored and made safe in 2008 by marble cutter Giovanni Giusto, who immediately arrived on site for an initial damage assessment.

"The restoration will be difficult, but not impossible. The first thing to do is to recover all the fragments, even those that ended up in the water, but we'll also need to use our imagination because not all of them will be found," Giusto told ANSA.