Canada – Montreal focuses on the protection of cultural heritage

Today in Montreal, focus will be placed on the protection of cultural, historic and archaeological heritage and on the trafficking of art. In parallel with the art exhibition entitled “Pompeii, a City of Rome” (“Pompei, una citta’ romana”) hosted at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) has organised, for 25 May at the Maxwell-Cumming Auditorium, a lecture by Major Luigi Mancuso, Commander of the Carabinieri’s Palermo-based Cultural Heritage Protection Unit. The lecture will be followed by a presentation by Marc Balcells, professor of criminology at the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, on “Looting Italy: A Criminological Analysis of the Supply Side”, followed by “Documenting the Nature and Extent of Japanese Cultural Plunder in World War II”, edited by Ricardo J. Elia, associate professor of archaeology at the Boston University, and lastly by “ISIS and Antiquities Trafficking: Al-Qaeda 2.0”, edited by Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, of the Marine Corps and Assistant District Attorney of  Manhattan. The event is part of the rich agenda of lectures promoted by the IIC to highlight the excellence of Italy’s knowledge on the Roman civilisation, its historic and archaeological heritage and the Latin documentary evidence, and on the major restoration and recovery of new areas of Pompeii. Indeed, Pompeii reveals on a daily basis the fascination of a living archaeological site, where Italian art in conserving and restoring antiquities asserts itself as the globally recognised world leader. Montreal hosts for the first time an exhibition dedicated to Pompeii and Herculaneum, two cities founded in the 4^th Century BC during the Roman Empire and destroyed during the spectacular eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.