Chilling message in German left on Holocaust memorial in Rome.

A sticker with an inscription in German stating: "The murderer always returns to the scene of the crime" was attached to a Holocaust memorial cobblestone on Via della Reginella, in Rome's Jewish Ghetto area, in the early hours of 29 May.

The Arte in Memoria association, which promotes the Memorie dʻinciampo memorial project, has condemned this "latest act of desecration of the memory of the victims of the Nazi-fascist deportation."

Known as stolpersteine in German, or literally translated “stumbling stones”, there have been 288 cobblestone-sized memorials placed across Rome since 2010 by Berlin artist Gunter Demnig.

The plaques are installed outside the last chosen place of residence of victims of the Holocaust, detailing their first and last names, date of birth, date and place of deportation, and date of death in a Nazi extermination camp.

The incident at Via della Reginella 10 came the week after school children and their families cleaned the city's 288 stolpersteine as part of an initiative organised by Arte in Memoria in collaboration with the German embassy in Rome.

Last December, 20 stolpersteine disappeared from a street in the capital's Monti district; one month later Demnig installed new memorials in their place.