Italy

Returning home: Italy pulls 100 works from major museums and sends them to regional institutions where they were previously shown

Loan initiative aims to decentralise Italian collections and encourage more people to visit smaller museums

Defacement of fascist inventor's statue in Rome revealed to be artist hoax

Fake bust of Guglielmo Marconi in Villa Borghese park was spray-painted to draw attention to the manipulation of truth in the media

Pompeii turns to tech to protect ancient site against climate change damage

Monitoring system that includes drones and sensors will track the impact of extreme weather

Remains of 'last fugitive' killed by Mount Vesuvius eruption unearthed at Herculaneum

Discovery announced as part of new excavations that will open up the ancient beachfront to visitors

Mamma mia! Posters for Naples blasphemy show spark outrage

Blasphemy laws in Italy are strict and can result in fines

Obituariesfeature

Remembering Desideria Pasolini Dall'Onda, who battled to protect Italy's ecology and cultural heritage

Writer, translator of Virginia Woolf, and historian of gardening and farming she became a champion of conservation by co-founding Italia Nostra

Beijing v Brescia: Italian city fights Chinese demands to censor exhibition of dissident artist

Chinese political cartoonist Badiucao has been accused of "spreading anti-Chinese lies" in his works

Italian police recovers Nazi-looted drawings offered online

The Cavedone studies were among 750 drawings plundered from the Czech villa of Arthur Feldmann, a Jewish lawyer who died in the Holocaust

Italy evicts Steve Bannon’s right-wing group from medieval monastery

Move follows long-running dispute with the Italian ministry of culture over the 13th-century Certosa di Trisulti

Safani Gallery's lawsuit against Italy over disputed antiquity dismissed in court

The New York-based gallery sued after US authorities seized a bust of Alexander the Great in 2018. The sculpture's ownership and future remains unresolved

France enforces vaccine passports for over-18s visiting museums and cultural venues

Controversial “health pass” introduced to fight a fourth wave of Covid-19 infections driven by the Delta variant

Elba, Napoleon's Italian exile island, hosts bicentenary exhibition on the controversial French emperor

Uffizi Galleries in Florence among major lenders to show marking 200 years since his death

Italy passes restitution resolution amid renewed calls for return of the 'Victorious Youth' bronze from Getty Museum

Italian senate approved resolution that could pave the way to restitutions as politicians call for return of Ancient Greek bronze also known as Atleta di Fano

Maurizio Cattelan unveils memorial to 9/11 in new Milan show—20 years after witnessing tragedy

Idea for the project was considered "too emotionally fraught" for New York by Guggenheim chief curator

Italy bans cruise ships from the Venice lagoon from 1 August

Unesco and citizen action groups have campaigned for the move for years

'An opportunity for bargain hunters' or a waste of time? Italy relaxes stringent export laws for Old Masters and antiques worth less than €13,500

Lower-value older works and those by artists who died less than 50 years ago no longer need an export licence to leave the country—but the process can still be slow

Italian Futurist's Rome apartment—a 'total fusion of art and life'—revealed by MaXXI museum

The small flat inhabited and decorated by 20th-century artist Giacomo Balla is open to the public for the first time as part of a new exhibition

Hoard of plundered ancient art—discovered by police in a Belgian dealer's home—is returned to Italy

The almost 800 rare archaeological artefacts are now on show at the Castello Svevo in Bari

Venice comment

The damnation of Venice: locals are being systematically driven out by officials who are selling off sites for tourism

Venetians are leaving the city in thousands because rents are unaffordable, while more than 11% of social housing stands empty

Italynews

Mussolini family feuds over reopened crypt of fascist Italian dictator

The controversial site has become a pilgrimage for far-right supporters

Pressure mounts for Italy to buy Torlonia marbles—world's finest collection of Greco-Roman antiquities still in private hands

As a landmark exhibition in Rome draws to a close, government's plans for long-hidden group of ancient sculpture remain unclear

'The city is ours, not the Mafia’s': public art project in Palermo unites community against organised crime in Sicily

Four commissions, including a 30-m high mural of a Mafia-assassinated judge, have been unveiled in the southern Italian city

MaXXI L'Aquila hopes to kickstart cultural revival in earthquake-damaged Italian city

New branch of Rome's national contemporary art museum opens next week in a restored 18th-century palace

A fatal Mafia bombing shook Florence in 1993—now the Uffizi is fixing damage to its famous Vasari corridor with memorials of the attack

Work on the 760m-long Renaissance passageway, which has been closed for safety since 2016, will be completed in May next year

‘The Colosseum is the last thing I would spend money on’: experts angry over plans for €15m floor at Italy’s most famous site

Archaeologists object to covering the amphitheatre's unique underground space and point to more vital restoration projects in the country

Crowds flock to revamped Uffizi Galleries

Florence museum unveiled new exhibition space and recent acquisitions

Rare medieval reliquary—stolen near Siena 32 years ago—discovered at collector's home in Sicily

Carabinieri's recovery of the San Galgano collection of “unprecedented importance”

Pope cuts pay for clerics but not for Vatican Museum employees

After pandemic revenue crash, Vatican slashes its spending but protects all jobs

Pompeiiinterview

Pompeii's new director Gabriel Zuchtriegel: how archaeology moves beyond the 'elitist male gaze' of history

The German-born archaeologist tells us about his fascination with the ancient world and the need to involve visitors in the discovery process