Autore: Eugenio Oropallo

A view of one of the churches of the city of Amatrice, Italy destroyed by an earthquake on August 24, 2016. More than 1200 Italian Art Treasures damaged by the earthquake in Amatrice on Aug.24 have been moved to a storage unit of the School of the Forestry Corps in Cittaducale, central Italy on October 26, 2016 to be cleaned and restored, though some of them were irretrievably damaged. The earthquake damaged churches, palaces, museums and medieval towers. This rescue was the first mission of the new Italian Blue Helmet force dedicated to defending cultural heritage. The group of 60 police officers and art experts has been compared to the Monuments Men who saved artefacts from Nazi looting, depicted in the 2014 George Clooney film. When the 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck central Italy devastating the town of Amatrice, the 60 modern-day Monuments Men; headed to the rubble. After bodies had been removed from the rubble the squad worked with firemen to carry statues of Madonnas out of dangerously crumbling churches before looters could swoop. The squad have entered churches, museums and town halls, all with an eye to saving the territory's heritage, and its very memory of its past. Aided by cranes, robots, drones and a dash of daring, they saved more than 1200 artefacts. The work has been risky and painstaking. Paintings, statues and ecclesiastical objects, like crucifixes and processional crosses have been bundled and sent to what amount to field hospitals for art and artifacts, for preservation and an early evaluation of the damage. The finds are being stored in a huge garage in the town of Cittaducale, where neatly labelled statues are lined up like shop mannequins, some wrapped in plastic, alongside rows of church bells, candlesticks and crates of shattered pieces of church frescoes that restorers hope to piece together. Most of the pieces are religious art. The pieces would be restored before returning home. Photo by Eric Vandeville/ABACAPRESS.COM 568890Restorat