Notes for a reopening of the Museums and Monuments post COVID-19 emergency

More than 80% of the World Heritage sites are totally or partially closed during the COVID-19 epidemiological emergency. Various institutions around the world are launching initiatives to support cultural industries and cultural heritage, sectors that are hard hit by the current global health crisis. Billions of people of all ages around the world are turning to culture to overcome social isolation – above all thanks to the use of digital technologies.

Themes such as “Shared Cultures”, “Shared Heritage” and “Shared Responsibility” have become constant concepts that express the global unity that is increasingly emerging to face the ongoing crisis.

Now is the right time to start understanding and redesigning the future of cultural sector, outlining parameters, strategies and potential measures to be adopted for the reopening of monuments, buildings cultural institutions and our cities in complete safety.

In this atmosphere of collaboration and influenced by UNESCO Campaigns in response to COVID-19 and by the general objectives of the ATLAS.WH project, Florence elaborated “Notes for a reopening of the Museums and Monuments post COVID-19 emergency”, a document that provide indications, procedures and recommendations – extracted on the basis of the analysis of international documents – regarding the reopening phase of the cultural heritage sites.

The document was developed on 15 April 2020 by Carlo Francini (Site manager of the Historic Center of Florence, UNESCO World Heritage and scientific co-director of HeRe Lab, joint laboratory of the Municipality of Florence – UNIFI), Chiara Bocchio and Alessia Montacchini (HeRe Lab)