Italy 1940–45: Allied Reports on Antiquities

During the Second World War, Italy’s artistic heritage was exposed to serious risk of damage and destruction, mainly from aerial bombing. From the late 1920s, the Italian government implemented a plan to safeguard and protect works of art, monuments, archaeological sites and collections to transform them into “virtually impregnable fortresses of Italian civilization”. After Italy entered the war (June 1940), these protections proved insufficient against the damage caused by the air war, as the Allies noted when they could observe it themselves. After the landings in Sicily (July 1943), the Subcommission for Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives (MFAA) was created as an outpost of the vast Allied program “for the protection and conservation of works of art and of artistic and historic records in Europe” and, in their two years in Italy, the so-called ‘Monuments Officers’ supported Italian Fine Arts personnel, ensured support for first-aid repairs and undertook the task of salvaging a highly damaged cultural heritage. By consulting the Reports of the Subcommission in Italy, this paper aims to offer an Allied perspective to shed light on and give a first overview of the fate of the Italian antiquities during the war, with a special focus on damage and reconstruction of archaeological monuments and sites.