Emblematic remarks on conservation and restoration of cultural heritage in Italy - the economy and the globalization effect

Most of the people care about their past, including the history, tradition and architectures, archaeology, masterpiece of art, in one word “cultural heritage”. According to different tradition of different geographic areas, the cultural heritage has been considered patrimony of the country, enhancing pride of the people. Sometimes wars and other natural calamities had damaged such a patrimony, but later on, we should often say, after suffering from the damaging events “cultural heritage” seems to have become a “virtual” property of a larger number of people. It seems that the danger of the disappearing patrimony leads to a larger sharing of the care of the culture. This means that the tangible as well as the intangible cultural heritage have a not easily appreciable value, if we compare it with the love we have for the gift received from our ancestors. Recently, the need to apply a more and more specific maintenance to the cultural heritage, as well as the request of withdrawing an arising quantity of money from there, produced an increasing activity of merchandising the patrimony, in different way, some acceptable some discussable. The paper deals with the Italian situation in this field and tries to make a comparison with international panorama. Final comment is given in order to limit and to control the intensive trade of the art, monument and cultural goods, to prevent damage to the goods as well as loosing its identity.