Ethics of Consumption of Cultural Heritage in the Age of Low Cost Tourism

Conservation and consumption are two words which clash. In the field of restoration: a relationship between an action which invites us to preserve cultural heritage and one which involves many risks for its subsistence should not even exist. However, the current ways of using cultural heritage very often involves its consumption. If conservation is syn- onymous with continuous care, scrupulous studies and interventions which many times are invisible (thus, not appreciated) but which are good for the health of the historical building or site, consumption conjures up images of haste, carelessness, superficiality and also spectacularity. In consumption, there is no perception of time, history, and memory which are fundamentals in the field of conservation, and those who use cultural heritage very often are not interested in the object itself but only in its appearance, which can be possibly and instantly transmitted thanks to social networks. Starting from these reflections and considering consumption as irreversible in the age of mass tourism, the essay intends to analyse if an ‘ethics of consumption’ is pos- sible, changing the prevalent idea that cultural heritage is a product to be consumed. Looking at the suggestions which come from other disciplines, such as anthropology, some reflections are here proposed considering cultural heritage as a complex inter- weaving of human relationships and cultural values which we have the responsibility to preserve.