Reading DeSilvey and other heritage researchers working on this topic was the first time I had considered an alternative approach to care of urban or natural sites, one of “postpreservation.” She draws attentions to the imbalance in our attention, how only some historical objects are deserving of curation and conservation while others are allowed to rot. In the case of Venice, sites that draw tourists – and their cash – like the Basilica di San Marco are endowed with conservation programmes, while, ironically, the authorities are doing nothing to protect the city’s very foundations from erosion caused by the waves from the public transport system of vaporetti and made worse by tourist flows. It is this kind of illogic that DeSilvey highlights in her book as she seeks to tear down our current paradigm of heritage conservation. She asks whether we can see opportunity and, even, the possibility of new life and new functions for places that are in a process of erosion or decomposition, and whether some monuments should be allowed to reach the end of a life cycle and be permitted to turn into ruins. It is a beautiful, lyrical, personal book that presents a new way of looking at what we do with old stone, and provides arguments for how to care for or treat historical cities.

Catherine Bennett