Sicilia e Grecia La conservazione dei monumenti alla fine del Settecento

Since the second half of the eighteenth century in Sicily you start to protect, and thus preserve the monuments of the classical city of Taormina and even a group of trees, called the " Castagno dei cento cavalli". In addition, in 1778, the Bourbon government instituted, for all the ancient monuments of Sicily, a commission formed by the "Regi custodi" - the superintendents of antiquities- from an experienced architect of ancient monuments, as a painter of views and a master builder, to investigate and detect the state of conservation of the monuments themselves. Following these investigations, in the 1780, they were prepared the first restoration in the temple of Segesta and in some temples of Agrigento.Instead Athens, Lord Elgin withdrew from the Parthenon and other monuments, many sculptures, and send them to England, where she could sell them to the British government, to expose them in the British Museum in London.In 1823 the architects and archaeologists Harris and Angell, after three metopes found in the ruins of the temple "C" of Selinunte, wanted to transport them to England, to be exhibited together with the collection of Elgi,n to the British. But this export of sculptures was prevented, because in Sicily were already active laws forbidding the transfer abroad of antiquities. It was allowed to proceed to the Discoverers of plaster copies, while the museum in Palermo were shown the originals of the sculptures. Sicily, already in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, understood the value of the evidence of the past and the protected and he preserved for the contemporary and future generations, which actually belong.