Town looks to cash in on botched restored fresco

More than three years after a botched fresco restoration by an octogenarian painter became a major tourist attraction for a northern Spanish town, local officials looking to inject new life into the phenomenon opened a center on Wednesday that celebrates the fresco.

Borja Mayor Eduardo Arilla said 160,000 people had come to see the fresco since the story of Cecilia Gimenez's restoration of a Christ fresco in a town sanctuary went viral in 2012. He said with the new center, the town hopes to keep attracting up to 30,000 visitors annually.

Gimenez, 85, smiled as she entered the new center in a wheelchair for the inauguration ceremony. She became a sensation when pictures spread on the Internet of an Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man") mural she disfigured while trying to restore it. Twitter users redubbed it "Ecce Mono" ("Behold the Monkey").