The delays in post-earthquake reconstruction, after the 2012 earthquake, are a fact. According to Il Sole 24 Ore, 30% of construction sites for public works and cultural heritage have yet to start. The damage also involves those profound reasons of the soul that are based on the affection for shared places (churches above all), many of which, to date, are inaccessible. This applies to Ferrara itself. So the presence in the city of Tomaso Montanari, art historian and rector of the University for Foreigners of Siena, who arrived yesterday for a meeting organized by some Unife researchers, seemed like the right opportunity to take stock of the situation. In recent years, Montanari has fought hard (starting from Mirandola) in the name of the principle “as it was and where it was”, referring to the need to reconstruct the destroyed part of the monumental heritage, in the most similar way to how it was before its collapse.
Montanari, from your point of view, what factors are determining the delays in post-earthquake reconstruction?
“I don’t think it’s a priority for the Emilia-Romagna Region and it certainly isn’t for the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. Enhancement, as the only true dimension of the governance of cultural heritage, means that in reality the recovery of assets damaged by earthquake is certainly not the priority. This is a general problem: of personnel, of structures capable of spending the resources that are there. We should reflect on the fact that Emilia-Romagna is one of the regions that requests differentiated autonomy will this lead to situations of this kind as an increasingly serious norm in the country”.
So the ‘as it was and where it was’ principle did not prevail, for which you, Salvatore Settis and others fought?
“I would say no, also because there have been completely gratuitous demolitions. The profound cultural prerequisites are missing. There is a devaluation of public space in the monumental context. It seems that the only thing that matters are museums as “machines for money”, as Matteo Renzi defined it”.
Ferrara is the city of Giorgio Bassani, founder of Italia Nostra. Does the role of Italia Nostra and associations still have significant weight in these areas?
“Associationism has a decreasing and ever decreasing weight, for many reasons which also have to do with electoral abstentionism, with a radical distrust in collective subjects and with a policy that increasingly focuses on the figures of the leader”.
The earthquake damaged several churches and much of the ecclesiastical heritage is still inaccessible. Is it necessary to rethink the approach to this heritage?
“For the ecclesiastical heritage we need a city project and shared management. We need the ability to understand what churches are and what they are for. Not seeing them as an activity for extracting financial income, but as spaces of oxygen, of lung for the community. Once ideas are clarified on this, solutions are found accordingly.”
Do you think young people are becoming disaffected with heritage? How can we recover a sentimental education (as he writes in his book ‘If love looks’) about cultural heritage?
“Sentimental education about cultural heritage is played out in the first years of life, in the family, in kindergarten, in primary school… I believe the Covid generation has appreciated the importance of public space and understood the insufficiency of the private and virtual. All the cards are in order. The problem is which political side they find. The fact that the first law of the current government was authoritarian against rave parties… it may seem strange to associate raves with the use of heritage, but yes. it is about the presence of living bodies in space. It seems to me that we are in a political system that disfavors social aggregation in every way and thrives on the atomization and virtualization of society, with a crowd that refers to a leader, is the exact opposite of participation, understood as the bodies that are found in the space of the polis, or politics”.
