Italian law on villas, parks and gardens

The first attempt in Italian legislation to widen the protection of cultural goods to include natural features was law 688, enacted in 1912. The law had a very strict interpretation of what deserved to be preserved. Essentially, it consisted of just three articles, which integrated the preservation of villas, parks, and gardens into a 1909 law that protected antiquities and fine arts. Preservation was thus limited to cases in which nature had been radically modified by art and architecture. This result was quite disappointing for the Italian nature conservation movement, as there had already been years of parliamentary debate and some very advanced proposals by deputy Giovanni Rosadi about the need to preserve forests, landscapes, and streams to same extent as cultural goods.