Rome’s Contemporary Past - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 181

tion, allowing them to be preserved for future generations who might have better
solutions. This could also release funds to care adequately for other monuments
where interventions might be more successful.
often in discussions of the future of tourist-historic cities, the symbolic role
of the heritage for the community, and the economic potential of heritage tour-
ism, are considered as separate items to be traded off against each other, but in
Rome there is a good argument for seeing them as interdependent. Rome's heri-
tage cannot support an increase in mass tourism and if Rome is to continue to
enjoy the economic and status benefits of being one of the world's most loved
cities, it needs to direct heritage tourism onto a more sustainable path. This could
include the development of niche tourism based on the distinctive local Roman
culture, which is fast disappearing, or it could be the expansion of tourist routes
beyond the narrow confines of the center, to the very many equally interesting
places throughout the city. This would spread out the impact and would encour-
age longer stays. The average tourist stays only two nights in Rome (berdini 2010,
327) and as long as this is the case, it is clear that all activity will be funneled into
a limited number of well-known sites within a small area. but new approaches
rely on something that is a dwindling resource in Rome—a local population. Re-
claiming the center of Rome for permanent residents is not only right for sym-
bolic reasons, it is also the key to a more sustainable exploitation of its cultural
heritage.
acknowledgments
much of the work for this chapter was completed during a period of sabbatical leave at the
mcDonald institute for archaeological Research, university of Cambridge. i am grateful to
the mcDonald institute and in particular its director, prof. Graeme barker, for his generosity
in hosting me. The weekly heritage seminars held at the mcDonald were of immense value in
developing the arguments put forth here. i am also grateful to The american university of
Rome for their support of my sabbatical leave.
Notes
1. mussolini stridently proclaimed that he was “modernizing” Rome when he demolished
large parts of the city center. Thus, the idea of conserving and protecting Rome could also be
seen as part of an antifascist agenda (cf. Dainotto 2003, 70).
2. This trend has been noted in many historic walled cities (cf. Creighton 2007).
3. The year 2000 was designated a holy Year in which pilgrims who visited Rome and
performed certain rites would be given a plenary indulgence for their sins.
4. The increased emphasis on seeing the historical city in a broader territorial context, and
the importance of historical cities as symbols of identity, are both central tenets of an update
of the Gubbio Charter published in 1990 (cf. lazzarotti 2011).