Former McDonald's director plans to commercialise Italy's cultural heritage

In the October 3, 2009 Telegraph article "Former McDonald's director plans to commercialise Italy's cultural heritage," Nick Squires reports "It is an inconvenient truth that no visitor to Italy can fail to notice – that the country most blessed with archeological and artistic treasures often seems least able to look after them."

For the tourist who has been left aghast by the drifts of litter which choke the Roman Forum or graffiti on Florence's Renaissance bridges and buildings or the incomprehensible signage at any number of monuments and museums, salvation may now be at hand.

A former director of McDonald's is putting the finishing touches to a master plan which he hopes will dramatically improve the fortunes of Italy's 3,600 government-run museums and archaeological sites and achieve double-digit growth in visitor numbers and revenue.

The Herculean task to which Mario Resca has pledged himself, as general director of Italian museums, is part of a realisation that Italy has rested on its laurels for too long.

It is also a reflection of the grim fact that as Italian industry struggles to compete with cheap labour in China, India and elsewhere, the country must look to its extraordinary cultural repository to create the jobs and wealth of the future.

"For Italy, the era of factories is over," Mr Resca, 64, told The Sunday Telegraph this week in Milan, the engine of the Italian economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s.

"Our future must lie in cultural tourism. Italy has a huge coastline but we can't even rely on that any more – there is much cleaner water in places like the Maldives. Beaches are everywhere in the world; what is not everywhere is Italy's heritage. In cultural terms, we are a world power."

Of the world's top 10 most visited museums, not one is Italian (the Vatican Museums ranked in the top 10, but they lie outside Italian territory).

While the Louvre attracts eight-and-a-half million visitors a year, and the British Museum five million, the Uffizi in Florence pulls in a paltry one and a half million.

Mr Resca's McDonald's background meant his appointment was controversial but he says he has now brought many of his critics round by touring the country's museums and listening to concerns.

"I see visitors as customers, clients. When you come to one of my museums, you are a guest and your needs should be satisfied. I want double-digit growth in visitor numbers," he said.

He wants clearer explanation of what visitors are seeing, better services including museum cafes (not necessarily McDonald's, he stresses) and cheery, welcoming staff, instead of the curmudgeons who have given some Italian museums a bad name.

Changing the way museums and monuments are funded is another top priority. "Until now the revenue from ticket sales went into a big central government pot instead of to the Culture Ministry," he said. "Museums had no control over their budgets. If a light bulb broke, they'd have to apply for funds to buy a new one. It was totally devoid of common sense. People told me, 'but it's always been like that'. That's going to have to change."

Mr Resca wants to use flagship attractions such as the Colosseum and Herculaneum to pay their own way by making them available to companies for private events.

The idea may elicit gasps of horror from some aesthetes, but Mr Resca insists that as long as care is taken not to damage the venues, there is no reason why such public-private partnerships cannot succeed.

The government has announced that over the next three years it will cut the Culture Ministry's budget by £850m. Only by offering the floodlit backdrop of the Roman Forum, for instance, to launch a car or a new line in cosmetics, can Italy's cultural treasures attempt to claw back some of the funds they have lost.

Italy has also been desperately slow to capitalise on marketing opportunities.

"You go to the Louvre and you find Mona Lisa T-shirts, Mona Lisa fridge magnets, Mona Lisa spoons. And the Mona Lisa is Italian! The French do marketing much better than us," said Mr Resca, noting that Paris has given permission for a McDonald's to open up inside the Louvre.

Cultural purists in Italy may fear the beginning of an era of McDonatellos and tawdry commercialisation under Mr Resca's five-year term, but with the nation's cultural treasures in such a dire state, many of his critics are prepared to give his ideas the benefit of the doubt, for now.