HISTORICAL VESSELS AS CULTURAL HERITAGE. AN ITALIAN HERITAGE NOWADAYS UNDERRATED BY LAW AND COMMUNITY

During the last two years, Cultural Heritages belonging to any country opened up their boundaries to tangible and intangible assets that were little known and not adequately enhanced. Following the recent trend, those heritages yearn for being part of our Cultural Heritage as much as Gioconda or David. Italian maritime museums, also supported by governmental and institutional associations like ICOM, activated some good practices such as the diffuse museum or the network between territory and museums belonging to the same category. Nevertheless, also considering the improved scenario just mentioned, Nautical Heritage is still little known and it is considered as niche product. The difficult perception of the Maritime and Nautical Heritage like a ‘real’ Cutural Heritage depends on the past bad attention to this kind of goods and, before that, on inappropriate legislation. Recent update to the DLgs. n.42-2004, Codice dei Beni Culturali e del Paesaggio, completed the Italian Cultural Heritage with specific kind of vessels. However, our relevant legislation is currently disregarded and not easily applicable to our case. After analysing critically the last twenty years evolution of our legislation, with this paper we mean to underline the innovative characters that our legislative system needs with the goals of updating the identification and the enhancement of our Nautical Heritage within the Cultural Heritage and, finally, identifying best solution for conserving and protecting it.