While Europe grapples with financial crisis, it is also fighting to preserve its history.
“The region is facing cultural calamity,” the Washington Post reports in a feature that considers the unusual measures being enlisted to fight the battle.
Among the examples, listed by reporter Ariana Eunjung Cha:
- The Palazzo Manfrin in Venice is up for sale.
- The caretakers of Versailles have agreed to let two hotels open on the palace grounds.
- City planners in Seville have okayed the construction of an office tower near the cathedral where Christopher Columbus is buried.
- The government in Greece has voted to allow paying cinematographers access to the Parthenon, the Poseidon Temple and Delphi.
Writes Cha:
Government officials acknowledge that some of the deals they are striking are not ideal. But the officials are in a race against time. … No one wants to have another Pompeii, where in October a portion of the wall surrounding the ancient city — frozen in time since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the 1st century — collapsed in front of crowds of tourists after it was weakened by water damage and climbing ivy.