Against the Threats of Time and Human Action

Facoltà di Giurisprudenza, Pegaso University Naples, Italy

  Abstract: By the last years the growth of sensitivity for the protection of environment and cultural heritage is under the eyes of everyone. It’s a process in continuous evolution marked by intrinsic historicity. In the seventeenth and eighteenth-century, antiquities were linked with social prestige. As a consequence, they became object of looting and illegal transactions. This phenomenon imposed the search for solutions focused on protection of tangible cultural heritage. Later, the assertion of the principle according to which works of art remain the most important witnesses of the past, changes the aim of legal protection. In order to keep the historical roots of the country alive, law must deal with the protection of the cultural heritage from oblivion. The awareness of the civil function of cultural heritage requires own rules in order to preserve the identity of the Nation. But what happen when war or natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, eradicate the roots and impose the reconstruction? The choice is between the preservation of what remains and the reconstruction by falsifying historical identity. The resolution to define normative tools to redesign, restore and reconstruct is not neutral but rich of consequences.