Protecting Cultural Heritage through criminal law: the Italian experience

Being characterized by an immense cultural heritage, Italy started to deal with its preservation centuries before the country’s unification, progressively building one of the most developed legal frameworks on the safeguarding of cultural property, whose peculiarities and complexities are analyzed in this paper. Following the ratification of the 2017 Nicosia Convention, in 2022 Italy introduced in its Criminal Code a new section expressively dedicated to ‘Crimes against cultural heritage’, providing for new offences, increased penalties, and an extension of corporate liability for legal entities working in the cultural sector. Being the 2022 reform quite ambitious compared to the attempts previously made by other countries, the paper highlights the main contents, strengths and weaknesses of the new section. The paper also reflects on whether the Italian experience might represent a successful model in preventing and mitigating the enduring phenomenon of illicit trafficking of cultural goods.