War, yesterday and today. Documentation of the destruction of and damage to historic-monumental buildings through testimony and recounting by the mass media

Monuments, according to the word’s etymology, are memories, witness-bearers, some born involuntarily and recognized as such by the time that has assigned them this role, and others clearly conceived, designed, and built as a “stone manifesto” to communicate a political, social, and religious programme – being, in fact, the expression of a civilization and a given historic moment. Conversely, their destruction is seen as destruction of the collective memory with which a people identifies. War, and armed conflicts generally, in the lucid madness whose goal is devastation and annihilation, sometimes destroys everything in its path – even targeting the historic monuments and constructions themselves. Again, memory is linked to communication. Over time, even as increasingly sophisticated means of destruction evolve, the aims remain unchanged. When rereading a newspaper published during World War II (L’Osservatore Romano), and the documentation offered by today’s journalism as well as online documentation, we see the same atrocities – although in the latter the difference lies in information speed and the abundant details and images travelling in real time. The research examines the mass media’s role in recounting and documenting the devastations – considered actual war crimes by the 1954 Hague protocol – of historic-monumental buildings, underscoring how these media have changed over time and stressing their importance for conservation.