Crumbling Museum

Italy, from top to toe, is a vast museum containing some of the greatest monuments of Western civilization. But it is rapidly becoming one of the world's most ill-kept storehouses of classic art. P: In Venice, the parish priest of the 12th century church of San Felice, off the Grand Canal, was forced to stop in mid-Mass last spring as cracks suddenly opened across the church nave walls, showering the congregation with plaster. Near by, the floor of world-famed San Marco is sinking, Santo Stefano is developing its own leaning tower, scores of palazzos and villas are becoming increasingly strapiombati (out of plumb).

P: In Rome, Santo Stefano Rotondo, consecrated in the 5th century and the world's largest church in the round, has been closed for eight years while rain pours through gaps in the roof. The sign on the barred door reads: Attenti alle frane (Watch out for falling stones). P: In Milan, Santa Maria delle Grazie (which houses Leonardo da Vinci's recently restored Last Supper) also has a fine cloister with Bramante frescoes, largely ignored and badly damaged by water seeping through walls and ceiling. P: In Florence's Santa Croce, Italy's greatest Franciscan church, rain falls through the battered roof of the Bardi chapel, forms pools on the cracking floor.

In protest against the Italian government's refusal to appropriate sufficient funds for art restoration, Italian Fine Arts superintendents have twice gone out on strike. Last week the government finally promised some emergency help: $32 million as a first move toward "the safeguarding of our artistic heritage." But with 1,270 churches and chapels 720 palazzos and villas (including Raphael's Roman villa), 200 fortresses and 120 masterpieces (including those by Titian and Tintoretto) in need of immediate attention, at least $100 million was needed to cover only the most urgent requests.

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