Italian Nautical Heritage. Culture, Law, and New Proposals

Recently, Cultural Heritages belonging to any country opened up their boundaries to tangible and intangible assets that were little known and not adequately enhanced. Fallowing that trend, Italian maritime museums activated some good practices such as the diffuse museum or the network between territory and museums belonging to the same category. Nevertheless, Nautical Heritage is still little known and it is considered as niche product. Here, 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 updating to the DLgs. 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, we mean to underline the innovative characters that our legislative system needs to identify and update the enhancement of Italian Nautical Heritage within the Cultural Heritage and, finally, to identify best solution for conserving and protecting it.