The restoration procedure for the benches in Piazza Cavour is in order. The former chief engineer of the Municipality of Ancona, Luciano Lucchetti, 73, ended up on trial for that restyling, but yesterday the court fully acquitted him. “The fact does not exist” decided judge Tiziana Fancello, effectively assigning another star in the hearings won by the now retired former employee. “It’s the 34th time I’ve ended up in court – commented Lucchetti relieved after reading the ruling – always acquitted. I’ve been retired for seven years, by now nothing should happen again”.
There were several criminal proceedings against him which brought him before a judge. Among the latest also that for the steps of the Passetto staircase, damaged by the passage of a bobcat. He was acquitted in 2021 again because “the fact does not exist”. Yesterday another victory for Lucchetti, defended by the lawyer Roberto Tiberi. “It’s routine for me now – continued the engineer – I can’t say that a nightmare has ended because I’ve never experienced it as such. Fortunately I’m not the type to somatise and I was confident in a positive result”.
Lucchetti had opposed a criminal decree of conviction, for which he had been asked to pay a fine of almost 5 thousand euros, preferring the trial to demonstrate his innocence for decisions dating back to 2019. Piazza Cavour had to be redone and so the iron and cast iron benches had been removed, more than 50. Historic benches and also witnesses of the First World War given that some of them had the victory bulletin, that of General Armando Diaz, engraved letter by letter on the backrest. Built in 1920, they were not all in good condition and for five of these the Municipality had ordered a restoration which was then subcontracted to an Emilian company. It was precisely the restoration that had got the former chief engineer into trouble, who ended up on trial for having violated a regulation on cultural heritage and relating to the restoration of a historical asset disposed without authorization from the Superintendency. According to the defense, there would have been authorization. At that time, Lucchetti was manager of the “Design, maintenance, traffic, landslide, civil protection and safety” department of the Municipality and would have had a company from San Paolo di Jesi carry out the recovery of the benches. The Jesi company then subcontracted the work to a company in Reggio Emilia. According to the accusations, an important step was skipped, namely having the approval of the Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of the Marche. The benches are more than 70 years old and are, by law, among protected public property. The Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit investigated, after the question in the city council made by the councilor of the League at the time, Antonella Andreoli, now a councillor. She had asked for clarification on why a historic bench from Ancona had ended up in the cast iron museum of Longiano, in Emilia Romagna. After the restoration, the museum kept it for a year and then returned it. It is now in the Pinacoteca in Ancona.
