The volume is the catalogue of the exhibition presented in Rome at the Scuderie del Quirinale, running from 16 December 2022 to 10 April 2023. The exhibition is devoted to the people who, in the dramatic context of WWII, had the foresight to realize the threat looming over Italy’s artistic heritage and who resolutely took heroic and timely steps to find safe places for it, so saving numerous masterpieces from destruction.

With the outbreak of war, the highest Italian cultural authorities, to avert the danger of air raids, created the “rescue operation”, involving the transfer of portable artworks outside the cities and the protection on site of items that could not be moved.

The exhibition and the catalogue recompose in a single story the episodes and leading figures active in this operation. Some stories have already been told individually, others have been forgotten and deserve to be remembered. All are crucial in retracing the laudable achievement of protecting Italy’s cultural heritage. Personalities such as Pasquale Rotondi, Noemi Gabrielli, Palma Bucarelli, Fernanda Wittgens, Emilio Lavagnino and Francesco Arcangeli interpreted their profession in the name of a common interest in the dramatic contingency of war. Their stories flow into the exhibition and the volume that accompanies it.
In addition to a selection of masterpieces saved during the war, a broad documentary, photographic and sound panorama will be presented for a compelling and immersive account of an experience that was dramatic yet foundational in shaping a new civic awareness.

The catalogue has been designed to reflect the thematic structure of the exhibition through the stories of these anti-heroes and anti-heroines, whose work defended the very concept of the cultural heritage as a metaphor for safeguarding a collective memory and identity.