“Cosa sarà della nostra Italia, delle sue bellezze artistiche, di noi squassati dalla bufera che ci investe!”

    (8 settembre 1943)

In April 1938, in the official magazine of the Ministry of National Education, “Bollettino d´Arte”, the Minister Giuseppe Bottai, promptly stated: «penso che il patrimonio artistico nazionale debba essere difeso strenuamente e con ogni mezzo […] alla stessa stregua delle famiglie, delle case, della terra», thus underlining that cultural heritage plays an essential role in establishing the identity of a nation.
Well before Italy entered the war, since the mid 1930s the Ministry had given local superintendencies the task to devise measures for the protection of the art heritage from incoming air raids. This was done with the intent to protect both monuments and mobile artworks, the former with protective structures, the latter with the transfer and concentration in locations considered safe, far from the residential areas.

In the north–eastern area of the Kingdom, which then included the provinces of Udine, Gorizia, Trieste and Istria, with Pola and Fiume, the Superintendency (that at the time had headquarters only in Trieste), decided, in 1939, after some hesitation, that the collection point would be Villa Manin of Passariano.
Just days before Italy entered the war the Superitendent of Venezia Giulia, Fausto Franco, representative of the State authority, appointed Carlo Someda de Marco, director since 1932 of the Municipal Museum of Udine, therefore not a State official, as resposible for the transfer of art works from the whole region to Villa Manin and as head of that deposit.
Someda de Marco´s work became even more vital after September 8, 1943, when the north–eastern area fell under the direct control of the German Reich (Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland). In this precarious situation, featured by sudden upheavals and by any kind of material difficulties, Someda de Marco strived selflessly to protect the region´s heritage, to the point of a brave passive resistance towards the requests of German officials, who demanded to know the exact location of the deposits of artworks.
Someda has left a precious typewritten journal on the activities of protection of the art heritage he carried out during the crucial five years of the war. By recording his actions day by day – a practice he shared also with other officials and superintendents, who left memories of these years – he surely felt the need to justify measures and decisions taken in moments of crisis, sometimes without possibility of obtaining endorsement from his superiors.
Someda begun his journal on April 10th, 1940, two months before Italy entered the war, and ended it on May 25th, 1945, a month after the Liberation of Italy. The passages quoted in the following posters are taken from his journal.