Renovating the Roman Colosseum: Politics, urban restructuring, and the value of heritage in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT

The paper presents debates over two renovations of the Roman Colosseum between 2011 and 2015, within a broader historical and political context, as prisms through which we can explore the entanglements of neoliberal politics, urban restructuring, and the ways in which heritage is being valued. With reference to the criticisms of art historian Tomaso Montanari, archaeologist Salvatore Settis, and anthropologist Michael Herzfeld, the current study examines the political, aesthetic, and ethical rationalities inscribed in the renovations of the Colosseum and the spatial organisation of the city more generally. The paper concludes by outlining how new forms of political populism in Italy, feeding on the discontents of neoliberalism, have placed heritage at the centre of intensely contested questions of citizenship and national identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Italy
• citizenship
• heritage discourse
• Colosseum
• heritage protection
• Italian politics

Acknowledgement

Earlier versions of this paper were given at the Associazione Italiana di Storia Urbana (AISU) Conference Multi-Ethnic Cities in the Mediterranean World: History, Culture, Heritage. Universitá di Genova, Polytechnic School of Architecture, Genova, Italy, June 4-5, 2018, and the XIX International Sociology Association (ISA) World Congress of Sociology, Power, Violence, and Justice. Toronto, July 15-21, 2018. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers from the journal who gave me valuable feedback and made this a stronger paper. Additional thanks to Chris Armstrong and Maureen Boulanger of Nagoya University Japan for getting the whole project started by inviting me to give a talk at Nagoya U. Finally, special thanks to Miriam Jones for reading and giving critical insights on several versions of this paper, and to my colleague Chris Doran whose emphasis on discourse analysis helped shape part of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Manacorda’s article was published in the archaeological magazine Archeo, July 2014. See also La Repubblica (2014).

2 During a research year in Bologna in 2015–2016, I had the opportunity to study these ongoing discussions about heritage and the renovation of the Colosseum in both the Italian and English-language media. My research methodology is multidisciplinary and my interests as a cultural sociologist inform this paper.

3 See Rogers (2018). Another useful article that provides a nuanced definition of neoliberalism, as a phenomenon with multiple faces, is Mudge’s (2008).

4 Berlusconi has drawn considerable partisan as well as critical attention. Among critical texts see Bobbio (2008) and Bocca (2003). Beppe Severgnini (2010) gives a broader cultural analysis of the Berlusconi phenomenon in La pancia degli italiani Berlusconi spiegato ai posteri. For a more positive spin on Berlusconi and his political legacy see Alan Friedman’s authorised biography (2015). From 1996 to 2011 Italy had eight changes in government and Berlusconi formed three of those governments (1994–1995; 2001–2004; 2008–2011). This whole period can be considered the high-water mark of neoliberalism in Italy. Some of these governments, like the government of Romano Prodi, were left-of-centre coalitions yet still monetarist in their policies, as when Prodi’s administration prepared the country for entry into the Eurozone. Subsequent governments, like those of Mario Monti, were technical and austerity governments, determined to meet Maastricht guidelines and focussed on economic restructuring, with the overall result of increased levels of social inequality. The latter assessment is becoming almost inarguable; for example, as of this writing, top economists in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) flagship publication are on record that austerity policies do more harm than good. See Ostry, Loungani and Furceri (2016).

5 Tobias Jones’ chapter ‘The Means of Seduction’ in The Dark Side of Italy (pp. 109–130) offers an excellent summary of Berlusconi’s use and misuse of television.

6 A comprehensive examination of Italian living standards can be found in Vecchi (2017). Journalist Roberta Carlini has also written on the stark consequences of the economic crisis on Italian social life in her informative Come Siamo Cambiati: Gli Italini ela Crisi.

7 In response to the motion demanding the resignation of Sandro Bondi in 2011, there was a lively discussion in the Chamber of Deputies about how Titolo V of the Constitution subordinated heritage protection to a managerial and marketing approach. In particular, see the intervention of Eugenio Mazzarella (PD), pp-87-89 in Resoconto stenografico dell’Assemblea Seduta n. 422 di lunedi 24 gennaio 2011.

8 See also Allegranti (2011).

9 The government of Matteo Renzi supported a series of changes designed to improve the efficiency of MiBACT, called the Franceschini reforms.

10 This view is prevalent in much of the Italian popular press. See in particular Andrea Scanzi’s polemical and highly entertaining book (2017).

11 Some American restorers speculated that Giorgio Vassari’s fresco Battle of Marciano in Val di Chiana ‘covered’ the fresco of Leonardo da Vinci’s Battle of Anghiari. Matteo Renzi supported these restorers’ plans to drill holes and insert microscopic cameras in order to explore what was beneath Vessari’s frescos. Tomaso Montanari was among the art historians who started a petition to stop the scheme. See Kingston (2011). For the plans to cover the Basilica of San Lorenzo with a marble façade see Squires (2011).

12 In the 1990s New Labour’s ‘third way’ politics accepted the constraints of economic globalization, rejected the ‘old’ binaries, right versus left; state versus market; capital versus labour, and took a more positive orientation towards business and finance. See Leys (1997).

13 Neoliberal cosmopolitanism is discussed by Gowen (2001) in New Left Review. The term is associated with the subordination of state power to a new emerging international financial order that would orchestrate a ‘global governance’ through trade regimes. This has meant opening up societies to international markets, promoting the mobility of populations and labour, and encouraging new ‘disruptive’ technologies. Global cities were to be an engine of this change. Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (2002) is perhaps the best example of the naïve optimism associated with neoliberal cosmopolitanism. In that book Florida celebrated the power of high-tech workers and artists to transform post-industrial American cities. In his new book The New Urban Crisis (2017) Florida apologised for his previous rosy prediction. He failed to anticipate, he noted, how urban growth hubs, fuelled by international finance capital, could deepen local economic inequality and exclusion.

14 The study was commissioned by Oxfam; see Goldring (2017).

15 An examination of the different ways in which neoliberalism has been applied in the Italy see Barbera et al. (2016).

16 Quoted in Chen (2016).

17 See Bruni (2017).

18 See interview with Pappalardo (2015).

19 For Montanari’s quote see Telesor (2014).

20 Daniele Manacorda Intervista con Poceheddu (2014).

21 Turning public spaces into critical spaces has also been the subject of memory studies, a growing academic field that deals with collective declarations of forgiveness and remorse associated with postwar guilt and trauma. For a discussion of these themes as well as criticisms of how memory is commodified, see the work of Huyssen (1994), Alexander, Everman, Geisman, Smelser, and Sztompka (2004), Bauman (1989), McDonald (2013) and Kattago (2015).

22 Daniele Manacorda, who triggered debate with his proposal to rebuild the floor of the Colosseum, has written, with Renato Tamassia, an authoritative and detailed book on archaeology during the Fascist period, Il piccone del regime.

23 For an English translation of the Italian Constitution see http://www.jus.unitn.it/dsg/pubblicazioni/costituzione/costituzione%20genn2008eng.pdf.

24 Some of the ideas in this section are drawn from a stimulating conference, ‘Festa Internazionale della Storia: Il lungo camino della liberta’ (Oct. 17–25, 2015, Bologna Italy), at which Giuliano Volpe, the president of the Italian High Council of Cultural Heritage, in a roundtable discussion, spoke of the historical importance of Article 9 and its links to current debates about renovation to the Colosseum. See also Volpe’s informative (2015).

25 Robert Putman has argued that civic engagement and social capital are the best predictors of strong democratic governance. Putman’s concept of ‘social capital’ gained attention with the publication of Making Democracy Work (1993). In that text, which attracted controversy by suggesting that the Italian south lacks a democratic civic ethos, he restates the arguments made by both Alexis de Tocqueville and John Dewey that effective democratic governance depends on civic engagement. There are different ways in which citizens can be engaged and exercise their public democratic reason and popular will. Miller’s more recent book (2018) is useful in focusing attention on how the civic ethos is filtered through many competing and conflicting interests as well as local and institutional frameworks. This makes democracy difficult; it is not a transcendental norm, but it can work if politics, defined as the art and science of government, can combine skills, expertize, knowledge, justice, and a respect for the common humanity of everyday people.