The fable of Italy having "50 percent of the world's artistic heritage"

by Federico Giannini (Instagram: @federicogiannini1), published on 04/05/2012
Categories: News Focus / Disclaimer
It is time to stop saying that Italy holds '50 percent of the world's artistic heritage' (or even more) because it is not true!

Not infrequently we hear the incredible fable ofItaly holding 50% of the world’s cultural heritage: the last time, at the 8:30 p.m. edition of TG2 last night(Thursday, May 3, 2012) and the protagonist was TG2 anchor Luca Salerno, who at minute 20’27“ of video1 reads that ”in Italy we have 50% of the world’s artistic heritage, yet our museums are not among the most visited."

That of “50% of the heritage” (in this case “artistic”) is a very recurrent myth, and to give an idea of its unfoundedness it would be enough to think about the fact that different percentages are often read. The infamous 50 percent, in fact, sometimes even reaches much higher figures: there are those who claim that in Italy there is "60 percent of the world’s artistic heritage"2, those who go as high as 70 percent3, even on Facebook it goes up to 90 percent4 and maybe before long some outlier will pop up who will ascribe to Italy the merit of having been the only country in the world to have produced artistic testimonies, since at this rate 100 percent of art in our hands... is not so far away.

To dispel this myth, a little common sense would suffice in the first place: to claim that 50-60-70 etc. percent of the world’s artistic (or cultural, which are the two terms that are in vogue) heritage is ours is not only outlandish but also harmful because it produces a boorish as well as useless nationalism that leads nowhere. But since it seems increasingly difficult to prove that Italy is not the sole holder of art/culture in the world (or the one who owns most of it), it is necessary to highlight some numbers.

Given that I do not see how one can make a list of “world artistic heritage” in order to derive credible percentages, the only plausible method I believe is to count the sites included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site. From UNESCO’s official website5 it appears that out of a total of 936 between cultural (725), environmental (183) and mixed (28) sites Italy has 47 recognized sites (of which 44 are cultural and 3 environmental), a total that would therefore make Italy own 5.02% of the sites out of the total. But even if we took only cultural sites we would be at 44 out of 725: that would come to only 6.06% of the total of what perhaps comes closest to the phantom concept of world artistic heritage. It is true that Italy is the country with the largest number of sites recognized by UNESCO, but from here to claiming that it owns half of them is a long way.

Perhaps a well-known institutional video6 starring Silvio Berlusconi contributed to the circulation of the myth of “50 percent of the world’s heritage”: in the clip, he is even seen judging that “Italy is the country that has given the world 50 percent of the artistic heritage protected by UNESCO.” And given the blatant evidence of the error, one wonders how it could have been included in an institutional communication. Yet there are still so many people even endowed with some responsibility (and last night’s TG2 shows this) who spread the colossal panzana under various sauces.

Therefore, claiming with the usual rhetoric that Italy holds half of the global artistic heritage, besides being misleading, useless and potentially harmful, also constitutes a work of misinformation, given also the huge amount of people who trust these numbers and in newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, social and various media are repeating them proudly that their country has enlightened humanity so much. Such statements certainly do not help to improve the state of art and culture in Italy; on the contrary, they are completely counterproductive.

Notes

1. You can find it at this address by choosing the full 8:30 p.m. edition of May 3, 2012. The statement is at minute 20’27".↑

2. An article from today, May 4, that seems to closely mirror last night’s TG2 report. ↑

3. For example in this article that makes a presentation of Italian “beauties” or in this other article where it is said that the “70%” would be a “legitimate source of boasting.” ↑

4. On this note, for example. ↑

5.Link to the list of sites recognized by UNESCO. ↑

6.Link to the video. ↑


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