Italy’s state museums and archaeological sites are to donate their income, including all ticket sales, this Sunday (28 August) to the central regions recovering from a 6.2-magnitude earthquake yesterday (24 August). As rescue efforts continue in the town of Amatrice and the surrounding area, where the death toll has risen to 247, the culture minister Dario Franceschini urged Italians to “go to museums in a sign of solidarity with the populations involved in last night’s earthquake”.
The measure extends the decision by culture officials in Turin yesterday to “mobilise in support of the people struck by the earthquake” by donating all the takings from the city’s museums on 28 August to recovery operations. “In a moment like this, in which the artistic and architectural heritage of the country has been severely hit, it is important to reaffirm the role of culture by making it available to those who are suffering in this terrible tragedy”, Turin city council said in a statement.
The crisis unit of the Italian culture ministry is meeting today with the specialist art squad of the Carabinieri military police to agree a preservation strategy for heritage sites across the regions of Lazio, Umbria, Le Marche and Abruzzo. Restorers and architects will take action “only after the first emergency phase, which must be concerned with saving lives and assisting the affected populations”, the ministry said.
UPDATE: Almost 300 historic buildings have been destroyed or seriously damaged within a 20km radius of the earthquake’s epicentre, the Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini announced at a press conference on 25 August. The number is expected to increase as the Carabinieri art squad continues to survey the area. “To be able to do a good job of reconstructing cultural heritage we must take action straight away, even as the ruins are being cleared,” Franceschini said. Faithfully restoring the damaged towns while protecting them against seismic activity “is a challenge, but Italy owes it to these communities”. On the morning of 26 August, 268 people were known to have died in the earthquake, more than 200 of them in Amatrice.
