Reportage de 60 Minutes : Saving History ( 13.40)
As the Italian government struggles to maintain its historic ruins and monuments, Morley Safer discovers it’s become fashionable to help
It’s estimated that Italy is home to two-thirds of the world’s cultural treasures. Trouble is, the country is too broke to keep its historic ruins, churches and monuments from crumbling to dust. Italy is up to its neck in debt. Taxes go unpaid. Corruption in an overstuffed bureaucracy is rife. But now some of its most treasured and endangered landmarks are being saved, not by the government, but by a more respected Italian institution: the fashion business. As we reported last October, it’s stepped in to rescue some of Italy’s most iconic sites. Among them, the very symbol of its rich, violent and inventive history: the Colosseum in Rome.