On Oct. 16, the results of Sistema Cultura Sicilia, a platform launched by TEHA Group in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity, were presented in Taormina. The objective: to census the distinctive elements of the region’s extensive cultural heritage, identify its strengths and weaknesses and quantify its value, in order to define its potential and draw a roadmap for its attractiveness and competitiveness. An objective data base on which, it is hoped, policy guidelines can be built to avoid for the future ill-considered choices of the past, such as the one that led to the creation of as many as 14 autonomous regional archaeological parks (as opposed to 12 along the entire Boot), which proved to be unsustainable at the economic and management level.
But are we sure that these are reliable figures? Insinuating doubt in the wake of the event was Caterina Greco, regional head of the Culture sector of Italia Viva, a former director of the same department. She was in charge of the Salinas Museum in Palermo, the Selinunte Park, the Superintendency of Cultural and Environmental Heritage in Agrigento, and has also worked in the state as Archaeological Superintendent of Calabria and Basilicata. One whose familiarity with data is not lacking, since she also headed the Cricd, Regional Inventory and Catalog Center.
Greco in her j’accuse claims that the region would have squandered as much as 338,000 euros for “the usual conference” in which to propagate strange “cultural ills,” such as the lack of qualified personnel and the episodic nature of investments. The archaeologist mocks the “valuable advice of Ambrosetti” (The European House - Ambrosetti, now TEHA Group, nda) and questions “the (alleged) goodness and effectiveness of the reports.” Little does it matter that in the latest edition of the University of Pennsylvania’s "Global Go To Think Tanks Report,“ TEHA Group was ”reconfirmed among the best private Think Tanks,“ public policy research institutes that provide research, independent analysis and advice on national and international issues. But not only that, recognized as ”among the most independent in the world and among the best in Europe,“ while for Greco, the region wanted to ”fortify an important financial stakeholder that has always been a privileged partner in national policy."
“The data are all wrong!” he thunders. Mica oversights, the stuff of amateurs indeed: “monuments and complexes would be 40, an estimate so low as to be incomprehensible”; and then, the archaeologist continues, “parks and archaeological areas would be 32, while in reality there are 14 regional parks”; but it is with “the intangible heritage assets recognized by Unesco that we touch,” “there are 4 (the puppet opera, the Mediterranean diet, the Pantelleria tree vine and the art of dry stone walls) and not just two as counted by Ambrosetti’s experts.” Yeah, how can you forget two out of four?
But is that really the case? Since this is a question of data, but also of sources, we went to counter-verify them. If the former superintendent of Agrigento had taken the trouble to go beyond the online newspaper IlSicilia.it. that she mentions and to read the “Position Paper” downloadable by anyone on TEHA Group’s website, based mainly on Istat data, precisely on the Survey of Museums and Similar Institutions (2024), she would have been able to verify that those data are anything but “all wrong.”
It is, in fact, Istat that photographs 40 monuments and complexes in Sicily. And for the avoidance of doubt, the glossary clarifies what should be meant by “monumental complex,” if the definition in Article 101 of Legislative Decree 42/2004 were not sufficient. Just as with the number 32, reference is made to the total number of parks and archaeological areas and not to parks alone. But where Greco “patches” is by blatantly demonstrating that he is ignorant of the fact that the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage distinguishes between a “uninational” element, i.e., belonging to a single state, and a “transnational” or “multinational” element, i.e., jointly nominated by two or more states that share that specific cultural practice, expression or knowledge. The former include the Sicilian Puppet Opera and the Pantelleria Sapling Vine, as correctly reported in the TEHA Group document. The other two that, according to the archaeologist, would have been forgotten are, however, precisely transnational elements: the Mediterranean Diet, which Italy shares with Cyprus, Croatia, Greece, Morocco, Spain and Portugal, and the Art of Dry Stone Construction, which, including, in addition to Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland. Thea Group writes it clearly: “own intangible good inscribed in the UNESCO list.” And the word “own” that escaped Greco. Sicily is the only Italian region with more than one intangible good of its own inscribed on the UNESCO list.
In short, this is what we are talking about, three unique figures put on the index, when in fact all three were correct, within a dense series of other significant figures that were seraphically glossed over. To stick to economic indicators alone: we learn from the paper that the turnover activated by the cultural assets as a whole (theaters, museums, monuments, etc.) amounts to 352 million Euros, with an economic multiplier of 2.4: for every Euro spent in the cultural sector, an additional 1.4 is generated in the economy. Of these, 202 million Euros (57.4 percent) remain in the Sicilian territory, with a multiplier of 1.4. The effect on GDP is 331 million euros, with a multiplier of 2.5. The direct contribution to regional GDP is 194 million euros, corresponding to 58.6 percent of the total, with a multiplier of 1.5.
All roses and flowers? Nope. If Greco instead of wanting to pass the report off as a poorly compiled and, moreover, biased shopping list had delved deeper, he would have also read of “still very high unexpressed potential,” of a “gap with the main national and international benchmarks,” complete with merciless figures of annual visitors. The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, for example, despite being one of the largest archaeological parks in the Mediterranean, records just over a million visitors a year, compared with 4.2 million at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii and 4.5 million at the Acropolis in Athens. Then again, weight of insularity estimated at an annual cost of 7 percent of regional GDP; while it amounts to 71 percent of the heritage that remains unused or under-valued; with the participation of Sicilians in cultural events stopping at a paltry 24.7 percent, a share that drops to 21.9 percent among the under-35s. In short, a reliable roadmap in the hands of regional policy. Other than the usual conference.
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