heritagestanley

There's a story in today's The Times indicating that the famous mosaics have been allowed to deteriorate as a result of poor maintenance and suggesting that the Sicilian authorities have been guilty of neglect or worse. Anyone know if that's fair comment? It would be very sad if so. I remember that a few years ago there was a scandal about the alleged misuse of funds at Pompeii

daniel_t

I can't comment without having sufficient knowledge of it, but I wouldn't be surprised that the Italians don't look after their historical monuments.

What an irony they're replacing competent non-Italian museum managers with Italians. If people are incapable of looking after their own country, let others do it. But again, sovereignty matters even if some countries are de facto failed states.

philat98

€3.4m donated by the EU and nothing done. The money probably went straight to the mob. I imagine the same thing will happen with the bridge project.

modicasa

The money from the EU wasnt specifically for Piazza Armerina, but part of the 2014-2020 EU funding programme for culture, I think. Nevertheless the successive Sicilian "governments" both right and left, have done absolutely nothing for years - They dont have the money its true, but they always have enough to give themselevs huge payrises even though the government rarely actually sits. The state of the mosaics is like Pompei, Herculaneum and all the other places that exist from day to day without proper funding or programme. The governments want the income but they dont want the outgoings. For place like Piazza Armerina to have one professional mosaic restorer and some 'volunteers' is just asking for trouble. But... some of the UK press at the moment is spending alot of time slagging off eveything in the Euro countries possibly to distract from the shit show going on at home.

philat98

Its a pity that the best archaeological sites are in the worst managed regions. Lazio has a lot of Roman and Etruscan sites north east of Rome. They have a Roman villa on the A1 that was restored when the motorway was constructed. The guide apologised for the shocking state of the place when I visited. Most of the locations in Viterbo province are neglected.

C.2s

I have developed a certain amount of sympathy with Italy and the Italians over this issue.
I'll talk about the province of Viterbo also (since that is where I am), but I think it's fairly representative of most of Italy.When I first moved here I went to some of the historical and archaeological sites and couldn't get my head round why they weren't making more of things that, to my mind, were extraordinary... and then I realised that's they're sort of not extraordinary to the Italians, they're just kinda ordinary here. In fact there's so much stuff that it's overwhelming, and there isn't enough time/money/volunteers to preserve it all in a way that makes it also accessible for tourism. Within five minutes walk of my house there's the remains of the Roman town and necropolis, Etruscan fortifications and necropolis with 30+tombs, medieval castle, town and town walls, two or three renaissance palazzos, several 1000 year old churches, 1700 year old early Christian catacombs, tomb of a saint (kinda obligatory to have one), various bits of archaeology that people have in their homes or gardens... And as I am sure most of the contributors to this forum know this is not that unusual for Italy. So it's no wonder that the nearby remains of a Roman amphitheater are still underground, unexcavated and unmarked...in the UK it would be the sort of place that schools go on trips to. Here it's nothing notable.

That's not to say that Piazza Armerina isn't important and notable. It is. But I just think that it's easy for foreigners to criticise but they don't really know what they are talking about

daniel_t

Good point, C.2s - people stop seeing these things around them after a while. I wonder if Italy has the equivalent of our National Trust. If not, they should definitely follow the UK as an example. I'm tempted to say the most civilised representation of Italian culture is found outside Italy - in Canton Tessin/Ticino, Switzerland!

Btw I was teaching a group of 11-year-olds the other day. When I played an excerpt of Verdi's La Traviata, none of my students recognised the music. Some even said the opera singer was singing in Latin(!) (Well, fair enough, the lyrics might have been written in an older form of Italian.)

heritagestanley

There is an equivalent of the National Trust: FAI. It doesn't own nearly so many properties and they are very unevenly spread across Italy. But a few times a year they organise open days to a wider range of places. I think they do an important job very well and deserve as much support as they can get. We are members

philat98

What is so good about Ticino?

daniel_t

It's a reference to my earlier post. Ticino happens to be Italian-speaking, but it's outside Italy.

philat98

Yes but to obtain employment in Ticino you need to be fluent in German.