C O N T E X T 1 1 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 9 27 GalleriaVittorio Emanuele II, a powerful expression of the commercial dominance of the capital of Lombardy. In Florence the scheme to clear the old central market area (Mercato Vecchio) to make way for yet another civic square dedicated to Victor Emmanuel II was executed against a background of protests from 1885 onwards. Protestors included the city’s considerable community of foreign residents.The city’s liveliest old quarter had seethed with commerce, and been home to the poorest, while still visited by the elite and the middle class. Its disappearance meant the removal of the towers erected by the earliest nobility of the city, as well as guild halls, churches and wayside shrines. In the name of the city’s public health, allowable perhaps due to the area’s degraded condition, strong development interests and greed ruled the day. The guardianship of the heritage entered a new phase as the 19th century ended. The new Italian government had taken on duties of protection from the ancient states it replaced. It still lacked an adequate legal instrument with which to safeguard this heritage. Ever since the 15th century, the question of heritage had been addressed.The Popes, when they returned to Rome from their exile in Avignon, had issued a series of Bulls and Edicts against the despoiling of the city’s artistic and architectural riches. Previous despoiling had reduced Rome to a poor condition in its planning and appearance. For the three centuries that followed, despite farsighted declarations, an adequate structure of controls was lacking. During the era of the Grand Tour, the uncontrolled export of works of art from Italian lands was common. A presumption that the Italian race was indifferent to the splendour of the treasures from its past gave rise to this hoarding by foreigners. Examples of good government were not entirely absent. For example, the Republic of Venice, the Serenissima, had introduced from the 1500s a practice of making inventories of fixed and moveable assets with an aim to preserve them. Venice was in the avant-garde in formulating principles of cataloguing the heritage that remain valid even today. During the despoiling in the Napoleonic era, a great quantity of Italian art was lost. This prompted the development of legislation against its export. Lists of both public and private works were drafted for this purpose. The Edict of Cardinal Pacca, issued in Rome in 1820, gave an effective definition of guardianship. This inspired other Italian states (still not yet unified) to impose rules of their own. Following unification, the new kingdom continued its references to the Pacca Edict. It concentrated its attention on controls of the art market, rather than on a policy of safeguarding monuments. The marked liberalism of post-unification governments gave ample scope for speculative development. They allowed invasive change, as already noted, in the name of modernisation. The first comprehensive laws of guardianship (the Rosadi measures) did not arrive until 1909. It took until 1942, and the close of the Fascist era, for the first national planning legislation to arrive. The legislation from the past on artistic and archaeological assets was not re-adopted by the national Milan had to wait until the 1930s for a plan.
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