For decades the gems of the family have been in limbo. A salomonic solution, but of common sense, would be to show them to a perennial memory of a short but intense kingdom.
Three days after the controversial referendum that sanctioned the victory of the Republic over the monarchy, on June 2, 1946, Umberto II of Savoy, an outgoing king and never returned, had the jewels of the royal family deposited by Palazzo Koch, headquarters of the Bank of Italy by the Minister of Real Casa Falcone. It was a three -layer black leather box, blue velvet lined, such as the blood of the nobles, which still holds more than six thousand brilliant six thousand pearls, various gems, diades, bracelets, necklaces, pins, earrings. Some date back to the time of the Kingdom of Italy, others are previous, memorabilia of the Savoy house over the centuries.
Almost eighty years have passed but the Savoy jewels still remain in limbo, inaccessible to the heirs but not even confiscated by the Italian state. The last attempt to get them back to three years ago, there was still no meloni in the government and Vittorio Emanuele IV was still in life, alongside the three sisters, the three Marie – the princesses Maria Pia, Maria Gabriella and Maria Beatrice: they intended a cause to the Bank of Italy, the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Economy to get back the home jewels but without succeeding.
In the famous thirteenth provision in the appendix to the Constitution, it was indicated that the assets of the Savoy house were avocati in the republican state. But can the jewels be considered in the same way as the buildings, the estates, the collections confiscated to the reigning house or fall into goods that have more a personal, familiar value, however more relevant to the sphere of relevance of the dynasty? A careful reconstruction of the story made it Fabio Andriola in his magazine history on the net, just relaunched on newsstands. When Umberto II gave, it seems at the request of Alcide De Gasperi, the treasures of the crown accompanied them with a deliberately sibylline letter: «As a consequence of the latest events I want the joys of the crown to be immediately in the hands of a commissioner who could take hasty measures and perhaps make a distribution and a assignment not compliant with the historical value. They are joys brought by the queens and princesses of the Savoy house. I would like to be filed with the Bank of Italy to be delivered to those who law ».
Yeah, who really is entitled? The paradox, notes Andriola, is that the President of the Republic Luigi Einaudi defend the cause of the Savoy, Monarchic as its predecessor, Enrico De Nicola (one of the paradoxes of our Republic: he had the first two monarchical presidents …). Einaudi used a prudential formula “it could be considered that the joys are due not to the state property, but to the royal family”. On the other hand, two governors of the Bank of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, who also became the head of the state, and Mario Draghi. The request to photograph the jewels of the Savoy house from Maria Gabriella to make it a book was even denied. Moreover, the treasure was evaluated by two famous jewelers, Gianni Bulgari and Roberto Vespasiani, and their technical response devalued the jewels for their antiquated foggia; But the historical, antiquarian and symbolic value remains intact. The arch on which the assessments seem to be very wide: from 30 to 300 million euros.
Time is a gentleman, and after 56 years of exile the return of male Savoy to Italy was admitted, banned in those rules not by chance defined as transitory. The bitter surprise for those who had the cause of the return of the Savoy to Italy for decades was that when the possibility was granted, Vittorio Emanuele IV and his family remained resident in Switzerland, Geneva, and in summer in Corsica, horse island; They had the right to return but they only did it from occasional tourists, for events or by boat. Now the heir Emanuele Filiberto will resort to the European Court of Human Rights and extend the request to get some properties back. We have no legal competence to enter into the merits of the dispute; But it is evident that it is now a dispute that invests a mere private and patrimonial question, if not coming: the heir would like to take advantage of the assets of his family claiming that they precisely belong to the family and not to the kingdom then turned into the Republic.
Perhaps the only solution of common sense, even before legal, would be Salomonic: distinguish between goods that remain in the state and assets that return to the Savoy family. Or with further mediation, providing that they are exposed and kept in some place to a perennial memory of a story and a dynasty that basically reigned on Italy in a rather short period of time, equal to the life of a man: eighty -six years old. Once I noticed that my grandfather, born in 1859, was born under the Bourbons, before the unitary state under the crown of the Savoy was born. If he had died at eighty -seven years old, after the fateful June 2, 1946, we could have said that he was not born or died under the Savoy. And this does well the idea that transitory were not only the rules applied to the Savoy (and to the fascist regime) but that kingdom was transient, especially if compared to the longest -lived one of the Habsburgs north, of the Bourbons in the South, and other dynasties in other cities of Italy. A passing monarchy even if in that short arch, we had the Risorgimento and the unification of Italy, the colonial wars, the fascist regime, the empire, two world wars. Short but intense kingdom.
