Italy is the fourth biggest tourism destination in the world after France, the United States and Spain, and is the country with the highest number of UNESCO world heritage sites.
Nevertheless, its low growth and debt has forced the government to allocate just 0.21 percent of its gross domestic product to culture.
Now, after cutting dramatically cultural budgets, with its most famous monuments in need of repair, and after seeking private investors to help preserve a unique cultural heritage, the Italian government is going even further.
Disused castles, fortresses, prisons and islands in Italy are to be converted into luxury hotels
Disused castles, fortresses, prisons and islands in Italy are to be converted into luxury hotels
Italy plans to rent out a few pieces of its cultural heritage to the highest bidder in an effort to generate more revenues. The initiative will switch castles, monasteries and even prisons into luxury hotels.
This appear to be a totally new step after the Uffizi Gallery in Florence started to rent out its space for fashion shows.
Italian state property firm L’Agenzia del Demanio has listed 63 properties that will be leased to private companies for development. Of those, 28 are already in the start-up process.
“We will put out the tender notices by the end of the year,” Stefano Scalera, director of the Italian state property agency, said during an introductory meeting in Rome.
Right now, the leases are planned to run for 50 years, at a price that is not set yet. If the project will be successful, it may be expanded to include much more sites.
The initiative, presented in Rome, does not just aim at reducing the 2 trillion euros ($2.7 trillion) debt but also revitalize and inject new energy into the Italian tourist industry as the economic crisis continues to escalate in the country.
Furthermore, the project will be a force promoting sites that are actually abandoned or have fallen into disrepair. “It is a project to promote the effective management of Italian cultural heritage which includes properties that are rarely used or have fallen into disuse,” the agency said.
The lease will also ensure the sites will finally receive general and specific maintenance over the period of the agreement.
As for other countries, the economic crisis has also hit Italy’s tourist industry. In the Bel Paese tourism accounts for almost 10 percent of the nation’s GDP, and Rome is hoping to make that figure grow even more, or at least keep it as it was before the beginning of the crisis.
For decades tourism has been considered a fundamental industry for the country. Nonetheless, not much has been done to ensure that. The new initiative may now be envisioned as a part of a bigger action plan aiming at reverse that trend.
So make sure you check your hotel next time you travel to Italy, you could find yourself sleeping into a luxury medieval castle.
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