Paolucci responds to Citati

“The Sistine Chapel wronged by tourists : affronts to the treasures and the faith”, is the title of an article by Pietro Citati, published in Corriere della sera on 27 September on Michangelo's masterpiece which every year is visited by five million people. “I believe”, he writes, “that it will soon be necessary to restore the Sistine Chapel yet again; and this will go on and on, as long as the vast vault is filled by heavy human breath”. Antonio Paolucci, the Director of the Vatican Museums, responds to the writer himself. “I know Citati and he is an author whom I admire and esteem. This said, what he is talking about is a problem of all the important museums that attract the masses: his words could equally well describe the Uffizi or the Louvre. The time when only Russian grand dukes, English lords or experts, such as Bernard Berenson, had access to the great masterpieces of art is definitely over. We are now in the epoch of mass tourism, millions of people want to enjoy the culture of the past; it is a phenomenon of which we are perfectly aware and which must be faced. We have tripled the number of guards”, Paolucci continues,  “and for the past two years a study has been under way for the renewal of the ventilation system and damp control. But restricted entry is unthinkable. The Sistine  is not only a place of art, it is also a consecrated chapel, a compendium of theology and a true and proper catechism in pictures. Would it be possible to limit entry to Lourdes or to San Giovanni Rotondo? With the emancipation of the developing countries more and more people will be able to travel to Rome and will have access to this beauty, visiting the two places that are symbols of the capital of Christianity: the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel”. Moreover, at the end of the year, Paolucci tells us, the new plan to combat atmospheric pollutants will be presented to the press. “It is a very ambitious and expensive project but the preservation of this work is, obviously, our top priority”.