Rome’s Contemporary Past - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 180

cient monuments can only withstand so many pairs of feet and so much traffic
pollution before they are either irreparably damaged or conservation costs out-
strip income. This has been recognized by local politicians of all persuasions.
he center-left mayor walter Veltroni boasted in 2005 that he had created eco-
nomic prosperity in Rome by developing other sectors of the economy so that the
city no longer had to rely on “the spent motor of the historic center” (bosworth
2011, 287-288). mayor Gianni alemanno, leader of the center-right city govern-
ment from 2008, also recognized that the historic center had reached its limits.
he advanced plans to develop a second tourist pole on the outskirts based on
theme parks (including one on ancient Rome with a full-size replica of the Col-
osseum), sports facilities, and conference centers. in this way, he aimed to raise
the number of annual tourists to fifty million (Dipartimento turismo di Roma
Capitale 2012). it is debatable whether this could in the end help to conserve the
historic center: it seems rather presumptuous to assume that these extra millions
of tourists will want to come to Rome without ever visiting the Colosseum or the
pantheon, and clearly there would be no way of preventing them should they so
desire. as this topic was going to press (september 2013), Rome had just elected a
new mayor, ignazio marino. he has revived the plan to pedestrianize the center
of Rome around the ancient monuments and to remove the fascist boulevard that
runs from the Colosseum to piazza Venezia. it is, as yet, unclear how this will be
financed. The complexity of the situation was made clear when, in the same week
that he gave an interview to the italian version of the Huffington Post outlining
his ambitious plans for Rome's heritage, all of the work on the new metro line
ceased due to lack of funds.
The conservative approach to cultural heritage in Rome that has been domi-
nant since the end of the second world war has undoubtedly been responsible
for the uniquely preserved ancient city that we now enjoy, and it certainly was
never the intention to create a city center that was more like a museum than a
living city. however, changing social and economic factors have combined to
create just such a scenario and that should make us question whether this will
continue to be the best approach. The development of tourism on the scale we are
now seeing could not have been predicted even a generation ago. The strain this
puts on ancient buildings, combined with the sheer volume of heritage that has
to be cared for, makes the cost of ongoing conservation prohibitively high. after
the fall of buildings at pompeii, some archaeologists were bold enough to state an
uncomfortable truth—that decay is the natural state and that in trying to prevent
it we are attempting the impossible. instead of trying to keep everything as it is,
we should acknowledge that all we can do is arrest decay, and even that is very
expensive (flohr 2010). we may yet be forced to admit that we do not have the
resources for ongoing conservation of all the remains currently exposed and that
covering over some monuments, such as the Domus aurea, might be the best op-