Reflections on Italy's Past and Present

While searching for hotels and hostels to stay in during my spring break, I stumbled upon a series of poor reviews for many highly rated hotels. Reading closer, I found that each negative paragraph had the same complaints: the water was not always hot, the walls were thin, the air conditioning was insufficient, the building was old. After reading these reviews from unhappy Americans, I realized that the only flaw these accommodations possessed was that they were Italian. Americans are often accustomed to a lifestyle of cutting-edge efficiency and expected luxury. While the Italians splurge in many ways, much of their culture seeks to preserve what has always been. Rarely do they expect a visitor to be early, and air conditioning? Strong heating? They don’t need it. The Italians, in more ways than one, do not seem to seek change, but instead preserve what they have.

Last week, my Renaissance art class visited a restoration lab called the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, where they specialize in the preservation of hard stone. One of the most prestigious conservation institutions in the world, the Opificio handles many marvels of Italian history. As we wandered through the open rooms, we passed a potential Michelangelo sculpture; the stone was simply sitting on a desk. Our guide took us to a back room and talked to us in front of a restored Roman floor. The lab had completely removed each tiny tile from its original mounting and placed it in a more ecologically sustainable base. The team of conservators had spent a full year restoring the mosaic. In the next room, the massive bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery sat in a nitrogen-controlled case. The lab had been working on these for almost a decade. Among the efforts to conserve and restore, the lab always differentiated modern work from the original work. The fragmented Michelangelo sculpture differentiated the original pieces from the new ones, and the new pieces of tesserae were a different color than the rest of the mosaic. Not only was there a tendency to restore, but also separate the old from the new.

In Venice, history always takes precedence. Before this past weekend, I had never been to the legendary city—I only knew my parents’ ravings and descriptions from friends. As soon as we stepped out of the train station, my professor wove us through the labyrinth of streets, bridges, campos, and piazzas until we finally arrived at the Frari Church, a famous chiesa in the city center.

I am a very spatial person; I love maps, and I love being able to orient myself in new cities, but after that walk, we could have been anywhere on the island, and I would not have been the wiser. The architecture of the city climbs up and around the canals and walking paths. As the town was essentially built upon a marsh island, nothing is flat. The cobblestones push up and push down. Walking through San Marco, the floor looked like a checkerboard of miniature rolling hills. In one bell tower we passed, the lower half was built at a different angle than the top half, as if the constructors had corrected for the sway midway through the process. These tiny quirks and flaws in Venice’s fabric have been preserved for the past millennium. Repairs have been made at different points in the city’s history, but the buildings were rarely replaced. Even today, building or renovating in the historic center is a literal nightmare. Simple projects can result in mountains of paperwork. Venice, a city slowly sinking into the sea, a town that still collects garbage by boat, is reluctant to change, no matter how necessary it may seem. The cultural and artistic history is so rich, and the tendency towards historic preservation so strong, Venice seems like a city frozen in time, moving neither forward nor backwards.

As an art historian, I both appreciate and adore Italy’s embrace of its historical culture. I love that I can see the development of art over time; so much of the Renaissance and Baroque period remains here, especially in the cities like Venice and Florence that are no longer the economic and political centers they once were. Italy gravitates towards historical and artistic tradition, and I wish I could see more of that in the United States. But in spite of my attraction to this culture, I wonder if Italy’s tie to cultural tradition serves to divide it from countries developing more rapidly. Does it lead to wealthy and unfit politicians like Berlusconi taking power? Does it lead to the preservation of the power of the Catholic Church, even when few Italians attend mass? I love the Italian culture, but its implications are much farther reaching than the conservation of the art that brought me here.