SAN GIMIGNANO – Local authorities and heritage experts were assessing the damage to the Tuscan city of San Gimignano on Wednesday morning after a 20-metre section of its historic walls collapsed, with the mayor saying that local authorities can no longer be “abandoned” by the government to watch their heritage crumble.  

 San Gimignano attracts over three million visitors every year with its impeccable medieval aspect, granted UNESCO world heritage status in 1990. Running for 2,176 metres around the city, the walls were first constructed in 998 CE before being reworked in the thirteenth century. 

 The sizeable section of the wall collapsed shortly after 5.30p.m. on Tuesday evening. According to La Repubblica, recent heavy rainfall in the town is the most likely cause of the fall, with water undermining the solidity of the masonry. 

 No one was injured in the collapse, since the section had been cordoned off for some time, in the expectation that work would be carried out. However, dog teams did assess the area to exclude the possibility of anyone trapped beneath the rubble. 

 “It’s a disaster, we are shocked by this sudden event,” said the mayor of the town, Giacomo Bassi, who attended the site to the east of the town alongside regional specialists and firefighters on Tuesday afternoon.   

 “Other pieces of the wall are giving us major concern,” he added. “In restoration works of the walk [around the wall] we have just spent 1.2 million euros, the money of seven thousand locals in San Gimignano, when instead the city is the heritage of all humanity and everyone should contribute to preserving it.”

 Nonetheless, Bassi, who is also the President of the Association for Italian UNESCO World Heritage Sites reserved his most damning criticisms for the Italian government. Further restoration, he said, had been promised, “nothing serious, however, only superficial work.” 

 The mayor also lambasted financial rules that constrained the mayor’s office from spending money to protect its heritage. “It’s absurd,” he argued, “not to be able to depart from the [financial] stability laws to intervene for maintaining art heritage. It’s absurd that the Commune of San Gimignano has eight million in the bank and we can’t spend it.”

 “I am launching an appeal,” he said. “What we are living is a national emergency, it’s necessary to do something.”

 Italy’s Ministry of Goods and of Cultural Activities and Tourism (MiBACT) said they had taken the mayor’s details and that of other authorities responsible for the town’s preservation, in order to “sooner complete a project of recovery and restoration of the artefact.”

 This, unsurprisingly, failed to impress Bassi. “In reality they abandoned us,” he stated. “We mayors of these little, fragile jewels, can’t be left alone.”

 Events in San Gimignano recall those of nearby Volterra, another town which saw a prominent section of wall collapse in recent years. It was followed by a prominent fund-raising campaign, with stars of Italy’s cultural life appearing at various events to raise the millions necessary to protect the town.   

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