Arrivederci!

 Italy feels like a museum dedicated to itself. 

As much as any other country, Italy has to contend with its past. What do we memorialize, and what do we tear down? When we're forced to expand, what are we willing to bulldoze? The United States has shown an unending willingness to bulldoze its own history in order to make way for new innovation; essentially the entire country is built on the flattened ruins of its indigenous population, and that's not even to mention how often buildings are torn down to build new buildings, with no regard to the age of those buildings. Italy has taken the exact opposite position on the matter. History requires preservation in Italy. Ancient buildings must have clear lines of demarkation between the parts that are original and the parts that have been restored. Ancient buildings used for nothing more than memorialization take up vast swaths of land in cities where housing is becoming increasingly scarce.

Italy's portrayal of itself focuses largely on the past, whether that's its golden age of artwork during the Renaissance or the Roman Empire, the only period where Italy was the central power of the West. Cuisine culture doesn't necessarily look down upon innovation, but it isn't particularly interested in it, either. My perspective is probably skewed by my experience as a history student but it seems to me that the Italy that foreigners are consistently presented with is the Italy of the past; the Italy of the present doesn't have as much to say for itself. 

This becomes an issue when it comes into tension with the reality of the present. Venice is a city preserved in time; it's also owned largely by AirBnb landlords, leaving it with an economy that relies entirely on tourism to continue functioning. The L'Aquila Region is ravaged by earthquakes every few decades and its ancient buildings are rebuilt in a patchwork of purposefully obvious restorations. Rome's massive empty temples make no room to house its sizable homeless population. That, too, is not to say that this dedication to the ancient causes these problems; the United States is experiencing its own housing and class crisis, arguably worse than Italy's. The problem in my opinion is dedication to an image rather than to a people.