Monumental protection in Lombardy during the First World War: defense against war damage
The contribution is about measures adopted in Lombardy during the First World War to protect architectural
monuments from air bombing. In light of unpublished documents from “Archive of Monuments” of the
Superintendence for Fine Arts and Landscape of Milan, the contribution examines, on the one hand, the
cultural aspects that characterized, in that historical moment, the culture of restoration, and determined
the criteria used to identify the few buildings deserving of being protected. In fact, only for a very small
number of architectures - compared to the much larger number of monuments of important value - it
was possible to bear the economic effort to carry out the prevention works. On the other hand, the paper
analyzes the types of technical measures used for defense, such as scaffolding and wooden bulkheads and
padded quilts (as done, for example, for the Zavattari’s frescoes in the Chapel of Queen Teodolinda in the
Duomo of Monza, or for the Colleoni Chapel in Bergamo, etc.).
