THE PROBLEM OF THE MEGA HOARDINGS AFTER THE RULING OF THE LAZIO REGIONAL COURT: REPERCUSSIONS IN ST MARK’S SQUARE

The Lazio regional administrative court has rejected the appeal made by Codacons, which had opposed the sponsorship of restoration works to the Coliseum in Rome announced by the Florentine entrepreneur Diego Della Valle. So after months if not years of discussions, also in Venice, the regional court has legitimised the sponsorship of cultural places and therefore, as some newspapers have noted, also the mega hoardings. The problem directly concerns Venice and its Square, too. In Venice, as has been recently also pointed out by the Associazione Piazza San Marco, the mega hoardings do not always correspond to restoration works, as in the case for example of the Napoleonic Wing. According to the city councillor Marta Locatelli, the Roman case is not the same as the Venetian one, simply because the often very invasive mega hoardings are here authorised not as contributions to the restoration, but solely as the rental of public space and the renter does not pay any authorising fee to the council. The final result is that citizens and tourists see the advertising in the Square but do not see any related restorations or progress in the works on the monumental sites in the St Mark’s area.