An «Emiliani model»? The age of the cultural heritage policy between reality and representation

Between the end of the 1960s and the early 1980s, with the establishment of the regions, the Italian Republic paid increasing attention to its periphery. This process, which was to last approximately thirty years (1970-2001), was distinguished at the beginning by the attempt, in some Italian realities, to attribute cultural function to the region, through territorial planning. In Emilia-Romagna, this vision is shared by Andrea Emiliani and Lucio Gambi, who not only have relations with the president of the regional council, Guido Fanti, but also, thanks to Einaudi's History of Italy, with the country's educated class. They cooperated through their students in a regional think tank; then, when Fanti's planning season was drawing to aa end, their project animated the Cultural Heritage Institute of the Emilia-Romagna Region (1974), that was established before the Ministry. But, while the Ministry is a traditional structure, the IBACN is supposed to be something else: a place in which not only the quantity of objects to be conserved is enlarged, but also the cultural constraints of development and land consumption are placed. This position is, however, immediately defeated, while IBACN, thanks to the cataloguing of objects and the promotion of museums and libraries, survives until 2020.