Two monuments are together again, and a third will get some video protection.

Through the years, the Neptune Fountain at Malaga Cove in Palos Verdes Estates hasn’t had an easy time of it.

Consider, for starters, the vandalism it has endured, then the artistic tinkering.

City officials say that on two occasions, someone made off with Neptune’s trident, his three-pronged scepter. On numerous occasions, the four cherubs that sit around Neptune’s feet have been damaged. As recently as a month ago, pieces of two cherubs were found in the fountain’s pool.

“Probably a couple of times a year we have something happen to it,” Police Chief Gary Johansen says. “It is a very obvious kind of target.”

Johansen and other city officials say the fountain, a replica of the original that was sculpted in Italy in the 1500s by Giovanni Bologna, will soon get some protection. A video surveillance system that is being installed near the statue will allow police to monitor the area around it 24 hours a day.

Installation of the security system was a goal of the local group that organized the city’s 50th anniversary celebration last year.

The fountain was installed in the city several years before it was incorporated in 1939 and is its official emblem. It was discovered in a village outside Florence and purchased by the land company that was developing Palos Verdes Estates, Councilwoman Ruth Gralow said.

Gralow, who has visited the original Neptune in Bologna twice in the last two years, said the replica once had two identical brothers. In the ‘60s, however, Palos Verdes Estates’ copy was altered dramatically when the statue of Neptune had to be recast after his metal supports deteriorated.

The new Neptune, however, came back from Italy 25% smaller than the old one, she said. And the new Neptune also had something the old one didn’t--a fig leaf. Why?

“The prudish city fathers of the 1960s, I guess,” Gralow said.