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Refuges for movable cultural property in wartime: lessons for contemporary practice from Second World War Italy

ABSTRACT Experiences of the Second World War were recent to those who drafted the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and many of its provisions reflect those lessons. One under-used area of provision in Hague 1954 that reflects such experience relates to wartime shelters (‘refuges’) for movable cultural property including works of art, museum collections, books and archives.1 This paper examines damage and risk to movable cultural property sheltered in refuges in Italy during the Second World War to demonstrate that their secrecy exposed them to damage by (i) careless military occupation, (ii) deliberate combatant damage, (iii) accidental and collateral damage, and (iv) looting. The 1954 Hague Convention provides for marked refuges for movable cultural property under both special and general protection, and these historical case studies also highlight some of the potential advantages (and problems) of internationally recognised refuges in advertised locations, and of the Convention's ‘special protection’ regime more generally.