Italy is known as the country with the richest cultural heritage in the world. According to UNESCO , the country has the largest number of World Heritage sites, a record that reflects the vast number of archaeological sites, historic cities, monuments, and cultural landscapes present throughout the country. However, this wealth does not always translate into tourism, and many Italian monuments, especially outside major cities like Rome or Milan , continue to be accessible on limited occasions or even completely unavailable to visitors. This is the context of a youth project launched in Sardinia in 1997 that attempted to change this paradigm: “Open Monuments . ” The project, specifically, was born in Cagliari thanks to the cultural association Imago Mundi, with the aim of opening up closed-to-visit monuments for a few days and symbolically “returning” them to the public. The idea is based on a simple principle: making heritage accessible through the direct involvement of students. During the event, they and volunteers act as guides, telling the history of the places to visitors after a preparatory course carried out by elementary, middle, high schools, and universities.
As reported on the initiative’s official website and on the Sardinia Region website, the development of Open Monuments has involved many municipalities and volunteers, resulting in hundreds of sites normally closed to the public being opened every year.
Beyond its historical significance, it also has a remarkable pedagogical value. Children and young people gain access to pieces of history not normally covered in school, especially local history. It is therefore an important educational and cultural experience for young people, who often overlook the history of their own region. The success of this initiative clearly demonstrates the strong demand for access to cultural heritage, but also highlights a structural problem in Italian tourism. As data collected by ISTAT and the Ministry of Culture reveal, tourist flows are concentrated in large cities like Florence, Rome, and Venice, while other sites of enormous historical value often remain ignored. This imbalance between large and small cities increases overtourism in the former, but underuse in the latter.
The Sardinia region (where the project was born), despite possessing one of the Mediterranean’s richest archaeological heritages, including nuraghi, Phoenician, and Roman sites, tourism on this island remains anchored to the sea. According to the Sardinia Region and Sardegna Turismo, tourism is concentrated along the coasts in the summer, leaving the inland areas marginalized.
The initiative demonstrates that there is genuine interest in these sites, but also that this interest remains unexpressed for much of the year, when the monuments become inaccessible again due to a lack of resources and ongoing management.