You break 'em, you buy 'em.. at a museum?

It was every museum-goer's nightmare -- a stumble, a crash and tens of thousands of dollars worth of historic fragments lying on the floor.

The incident happened last week at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, which for decades has displayed a group of Qing dynasty Chinese vases on a window sill... until now.

A hapless visitor tripped on his shoelace, tumbled down a flight of stairs and crashed into the vases, smashing them into smithereens.

The man, who has not been named, left the museum shaken but undamaged -- in sharp contrast to the vases.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident but we are glad that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed," museum director Duncan Robinson said Monday.

"Whilst the method of displaying objects is always under review, it is important not to over-react and make the Museum's collections less accessible to the visiting public," he added in a statement.

The priceless vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, were donated to the museum in 1948 and have become one of its most recognizable exhibits.

Shocked but determined, museum staff have vowed to glue the pieces back together again.