As part of the study visits foreseen under PROCULTHER-NET, Italy hosted a delegation of experts in the management and protection of cultural heritage in emergency situations from Croatia, and disaster risk managers from Türkiye, who were eager to learn the Italian inter-institutional coordination practices, as well as the securing and restoration techniques for damaged heritage.
From 19 to 21 March, the Italian Civil Protection Department, leading the PROCULTHER - NET 2 Consortium, welcomed a delegation from the Croatian Ministry of the Interior - Civil Protection Directorate and the Ministry of Culture and Media while on 20 and 21 May, it hosted disaster risk management experts from the Turkish Ministry of Interior-Disaster and Emergency Management Authority - AFAD, for an exchange on how to reinforce the protection of cultural heritage at risk. The delegations were interested in learning more about the operation and functioning of the Italian National Civil Protection Service, whose effectiveness is based on the interdisciplinary cooperation among the main actors involved in the management of cultural heritage, both in ordinary time and crisis.
The first part of the visits started with an introduction to the key Italian stakeholders involved in preserving cultural heritage at risk: the Civil Protection Department, as the institution having the mandate of coordination of all actors deployed in the field in case of emergency, the Ministry of Culture, the National Fire and Rescue Service, the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, and the Italian Army, who explained their respective roles, the activities carried out, and the procedures applied in emergencies. In addition, the delegations visited the Sala Situazione Italia at the Headquarters of the Italian Civil Protection Department, the operational room from where all Ministries, institutions and specialised agencies and organisations work together to monitor the activities on the ground and to coordinate interventions in the field in case the management of a disaster should require a national response.
After this introduction the objectives of the two visits diverged as they were tailored according to the countries’ particular needs : while Croatia experienced the support offered by the Italian Ministry of Culture in the aftermath of the earthquake that affected the Balkan country in 2020 and followed proactively PROCULTHER (2019-2021) and PROCULTHER - NET (2022-2023) activities, Türkiye has been a long term collaborator in this field since the two countries began the PROCULTHER adventure together and this fruitful partnership is still ongoing with PROCULTHER - NET 2 (2024-2025).
For these reasons, exchanges with Croatian experts also focused on cultural heritage protection training programmes carried out by the National Civil Protection Service, and on the regulatory and organisational framework for the management of civil protection volunteers trained to support intervention on the field during emergencies. Moreover, the Croatian study visit continued at the Ministry of Culture, where the experts were informed on Italy’s guidelines for securing damaged or disaster-prone cultural heritage developed by the Ministry’s General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Security, the management of temporary storage facilities, and techniques for the selection and transfer of debris of cultural interest . The exchange reached its conclusion in Umbria where, in collaboration with the Superintendence in charge of archaeology, fine arts, and landscape, the regional Civil Protection and the Archdiocese of Spoleto-Norcia, the delegation visited a few symbolic sites of the emergency management and post-earthquake reconstruction of central Italy in 2016, such as the building sites for the reconstruction of the Basilica of Saint Benedict in Norcia and the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio in Preci (PG) and the Santo Chiodo deposit in Spoleto (PG).
On the other hand, experts from Türkiye were introduced to the management procedures of activities related to the safeguarding and protection of cultural heritage, according to the Directive by the Italian Ministry of Culture of April 2015. At the end of the visit, the delegation travelled to Tuscany with experts from the Italian Civil Protection Department and the Ministry of Culture who accompanied it to the cultural heritage sites severely damaged by the historic flooding of Florence of 1966. They first went to the National Library, where they learnt the most cutting-edge restoration techniques for books and archives used in Italy, before moving on to the Basilica of Santa Croce, which houses two of the most severely affected art works by the 1966 flood: the Crucifix by Cimabue (c.1263) and Vasari’s Last Supper (1546-1547), the latter nowadays protected from flood risk by a complex lifting system that uses ancient methods based on pulley counterweights.
Knowledge transfer during study visits is never unidirectional, in fact it is through these exchange activities that experts from the hosting country belonging to both sectors can in turn learn about the initiatives implemented by others in the same field and thanks to which it is possible to build synergies between projects having similar objectives or partially addressing the same issues. This undoubtedly is PROCULTHER-NET’s strong point which leverages precisely on bridging civil protection and cultural heritage experts and institutions for the reinforcement of the thematic community dedicated to the protection of cultural heritage at risk within the UCPKN.