Preventing: One Definition, Many Facets.
When we talk about prevention in the medical-healthcare field, we mean “the set of activities, actions, and interventions aimed at reducing the risk of falling ill, preventing the appearance or progression of diseases, and limiting the consequences of pathological conditions already underway.”
If we think of cultural heritage, the parallel is immediate:
- Targeted activities, actions, and interventions: designing safe environments, emergency plans, physical protection of assets, monitoring deterioration agents (humidity, dust, light), inventories and risk mapping, awareness raising.
- Risk reduction: a systematic process of analysis, prevention, and mitigation of damage to cultural heritage caused by natural or anthropogenic threats.
- Preventing the appearance or progression of damage: a risk management process that includes hazard identification, vulnerability assessment, development of mitigation strategies (such as preventive conservation and adaptation), emergency planning, implementation of physical security measures, and constant monitoring.
- Limiting consequences: constant monitoring of deterioration factors, planning physical and technological protection measures (such as alarms and display cases), implementing emergency plans with defined procedures, effective risk communication to all personnel, and risk elimination (rarely achievable).
Let’s rewrite the definition for cultural heritage:
“The set of activities, actions, and interventions aimed at reducing the risk of damage to cultural assets, preventing the appearance or worsening of damage, and limiting the consequences deriving from harmful events, ensuring the conservation and transmission of cultural heritage to future generations.”
From the Human Body to Cultural Assets: Analogies
In medicine, check-ups and screenings reduce future risks; in cultural heritage, inspections and risk assessments perform the same role: museums, galleries, archives, libraries, and archaeological sites suffer the effects of time, climate, mass tourism, and, in general, deterioration agents.
ICCROM, UNESCO, and ICOMOS insist on this point: without preventive management, conservation is not sustainable.
The 4 points of preventive action:
- 👁️ Self-diagnosis = Inspections
Knowing how to read the signs on our body, or on the heritage to be saved, is fundamental for tracing potential diseases that are not yet symptomatic. - 📊 Screening = Risk Assessment
Specialists talk about risk assessment: analyses that identify the type of risk, its probability, its magnitude, its impact, threats, and deterioration agents. - 🧯 Preventive Therapy = Security and Emergency Plans
Active, functional strategic documents are necessary: MSEP defines roles, procedures, and priorities. Without it, even a small fire can turn into a catastrophe. - 📖 Training = Empowerment
It is not enough to simply prescribe a cure; people must be prepared to apply it. From the security guard to the director, information and training are what transform guidelines into real action.
The Louvre Case
An example comes from France: the Louvre stands just steps from the Seine under the constant threat of flooding. In the past, the management admitted that in the event of an exceptional flood, it would not be possible to save everything.
To face this potential threat and house the museum’s works, the Liévin Conservation Center was created. An 18,500-square-meter building equipped with six different climate areas, research laboratories, and spaces designed to hold up to 250,000 works. Since 2019, restorations, studies, and research activities have been carried out there: over 3,000 interventions have already been completed, employing more than 130 international researchers.
This center is not just a storage facility but the application of an effective prevention strategy that acts not only as a deterrent to the event but as an active solution meeting multiple objectives: storage, restoration, and more.
The Santo Chiodo Depository
An Italian example is the Santo Chiodo Security Depository for Cultural Heritage, located in the industrial outskirts of Spoleto (Umbria). It is a functional depository-laboratory for the recovery and conservation of historical architectural materials in stone and brick (frames, portals, rose windows, corbels) and sacred wooden artifacts recovered after the collapse of buildings following the 2016 earthquake.
A team of art historians, restorers, architects, and archaeologists manages it, handling the reception of works, recording them through filing and cataloging, assessing their state of conservation, and assigning them to different departments within the depository or sending them to restoration centers.
While it does not include a restoration center itself, nor represent the final destination for the works, the depository is a virtuous and enviable example—so much so that in 2024, expansion work began to increase its capacity.
However, such a structure alone cannot meet the needs of the entire national territory, nor of all types of heritage for which a counterpart does not yet exist (excluding archival and library materials). The preparation of depositories of this type is part of the cultural heritage prevention system, essential for avoiding sudden emergencies that require urgent, partially effective, and expensive interventions with immediate response times.
Today, cultural heritage is under pressure like never before: climate change, armed conflicts, mass tourism, and scarcity of resources. Without prevention, we risk losing cultural capital.
Heritup was born with this mission:
to spread the culture of prevention and transform theory into practice, alongside museums, institutions, and future professionals.
For consulting, training, and emergency plans, contact us.
