Newlyweds who want to have photos of their special day taken among the ruins of the ancient city of Paestum in southern Italy will now have to pay up to €7,000 for the privilege. The news has added fuel to a debate about whether it is right for publicly owned cultural heritage to be hired out for private use.
According to a new pricelist circulated by the Paestum and Velia archaeological park in May, couples with €7,000 to spare can rent out the entire park for three hours, during which time members of the public will be barred from entering. The top fee includes one hour for photos inside the iconic Second Temple of Hera, which the writer D.H. Lawrence once described as “the best preserved of all Greek temples”. The bride and groom can nominate eight people, including a photographer, to join them at the park.
A €500 fee has been introduced for use of the park excluding its temples
For €4,000, couples can have access to the same areas for the same amount of time if they are happy to use the park and temples while they remain open to the public. A €500 fee has also been introduced for use of the park excluding its temples.
Located roughly 55 miles south of Naples, Paestum was a major Greek city on the Tyrrhenian Sea that thrived for two centuries after its foundation around 600BC. Today, visitors flock to see the site’s three temples, including two adjacent structures dedicated to Hera—the goddess of marriage, women and family—and another to Athena on the other side of the town centre.
The cost of renting out the entire park for the whole day previously cost just €200, the newspaper Il Mattino reports. The price hike was introduced after the culture ministry published new guidelines in April indicating how the costs of renting public spaces for private use should be determined. The guidelines imposed a minimum fee calculated on the basis of a site’s size, its importance and the type of event requested. The ministry published an updated list of fees last March.
The management of the Paestum archaeological park said they had devised their new fees based on the ministry’s updated list. The park did not respond to The Art Newspaper’s request for comment.
‘Culture must be accessible to all’
In a press note circulated in June, Toni Ricciardi, a Democratic Party parliamentarian in Italy’s lower house, claimed that the new fees were “a baffling anomaly”, and accused the park of being complicit in what he called the ministry’s “discriminatory” measure. “Culture as per the constitution must be accessible to all,” Ricciardi said.
In Italy’s upper house, the senator Valeria Valente filed a parliamentary request in June demanding that Gennaro Sangiuliano, the culture minister, indicate “what urgent initiatives he intends to take to guarantee the full public usability and protection of Paestum”. A spokesperson for Valente tells The Art Newspaper that Sangiuliano has not yet responded.
A trend for renting out heritage sites for private events has emerged
Rosanna Carrieri, a cultural heritage management expert at the University of Salento in Lecce, says that a trend for renting out heritage sites for private events had emerged over the previous decade. She added that the introduction of greater autonomy for museums and archaeological parks in 2014 had made it easier for those managing sites to introduce the fees.
Italy opened the way for renting out state-owned museums and heritage sites for private use in 1993. The issue came to a head in June, when the 18th-century Braidense library, part of the state-run Pinacoteca di Brera museum in Milan, was entrusted to the celebrity beautician Cristina Fogazzi for a private dinner promoting her Overskin make-up brand. Fogazzi paid €80,000 for the space and €15,000 for custodians’ fees. Students complained that the closure had disrupted their study. In an interview for Corriere della Sera newspaper, Angelo Crespi, the director of the Brera museum, retorted that the funds would help restore and conserve heritage at the museum.