Law, administration and management of Cultural Heritage

In line with the objectives of the degree program, the teaching aims to analyze the roots, notably Romanist of the system of legal protection of cultural property. Although the concepts of "cultural heritage" or "cultural property" are foreign to Roman legal experience, in Roman law, and in the jurisprudential elaboration developed over millennia, we find the basis of that collective, social and, finally, legal consciousness, by virtue of which the community reserves special protection for identity, cultural and/or aesthetic elements. In the course of the lectures, students will acquire the fundamentals of the main institutes pertaining to this elaboration, such as that of res publicae (in usu publico), res communes omnium, actiones populares and interdicta popularia, while also verifying how some of its cornerstones persist even in contemporary reflections relating to the management of public heritage, particularly cultural heritage. Similarly, within the framework of the teaching it will be possible to analyze the regulatory interventions of republican and imperial institutions aimed at safeguarding urban decorum, the natural environment, and the agrarian context; interventions that, in addition to sometimes still proving relevant in their informing principles, conceal a valuable balancing effort between the interests of individuals and those of the community. Alongside them, the emergence of figures deputed to safeguard the aesthetics, ornamentation, functionality and healthfulness of urban and nonurban places will shed light on the tasks entrusted to them, and on the evolution of the instruments of care and protection of assets relevant to the community. Thanks to the knowledge acquired in the course of the lectures, students will be able to grasp the fundamental points of the evolution of the system of protection accorded to the field of culture-which, starting from the Roman experience, will be projected with new impulses into the Middle Ages and the modern age, finally acquiring its present form-by fully understanding its rationality and reasonableness, as well as its informing principles.