QUAKES COMPOUND ITALY'S TASK AS KEEPER OF WORLD ART TREASURE.

Byline: Frances D'Emilio Associated Press 

Bombers, thieves, arsonists. Car exhaust and tourists' breath. Even without the fury of nature, like the two-fisted punch of earthquakes that ravaged Assisi's medieval basilica, Italy struggles to safeguard the world's most concentrated collection of cultural wealth.

The pair of violent quakes Friday weakened and then brought down much of the vaulted ceiling of the Basilica of St. Francis, killing four people. Six others died in the earthquakes. At least 12 people were injured and 2,500 were forced from their homes.

Just six days before, Italy's culture minister warned that Pompeii, the Roman city destroyed in A.D. 79 by an eruption of Vesuvius, might face a ``second death'' unless more space was opened to tourists to relieve overcrowding.

Culture Minister Walter Veltroni declared Pompeii, short on custodians and archeologists, Italy's latest cultural emergency - but new blows and new lows are registered regularly.

``In effect, the problem is, the marvel is, that Italy is one sprawling museum,'' said Gianna Marini, co-director of Il Giornalie dell'Arte, a monthly that chronicles the highlights and embarrassments of the Italian art world.

``Even the smallest city has significant treasures. In any other country, this wealth would be super-valued, coddled. Here the cultural patrimony is so vast,'' Marini said a few hours after the earthquakes, that it is impossible to give everything proper care.

In Italy, not only churches, palaces and ancient forums are special, but entire cities may be architectural treasures, Marini noted. Urbino, whose center was hit hard by Friday's quakes, is the walled, Renaissance town where Raphael was born.

Earlier this month, the World Monuments Watch group named 11 sites in Italy - more than any other country - to its list of the world's 100 most endangered cultural heritage sites.

The list included Pompeii, the Etruscan painted tombs in Tarquinia and part of Florence's Boboli Gardens.

In Tarquinia, access to the tombs is strictly controlled. Tourists are taken down by guides, and viewing time is kept to a few minutes to limit damage to the frescoes from light and the visitors' breath.

Italy's cultural riches have been roughly calculated to include 100,000 churches, 3,500 museums, 2,100 archeological sites, 40,000 castles and 30,000 archives.

Earlier this year, the government set aside $105 million for fire alarms, security systems and training to protect the cultural treasures at 1,000 sites. The action came a month after fire heavily damaged Turin's cathedral, endangering the Shroud of Turin.

Art thefts from churches, which are on practically every corner in cities like Rome, Venice and Florence, are endemic. Some clergy have started keeping the doors tightly bolted except in limited hours for worship.

And a rash of Mafia bombings in 1993 heavily damaged the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and two art-rich churches in Rome.

The cultural ministry gets a perennially minuscule allotment from Italy's annual budget, and many have turned their hopes to the private sector.

For at least a decade, the most famous monuments, including Rome's Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum, have found sponsors like insurance companies and banks to pay for face lifts.

The attention paid by corporations ``is a positive element if it signifies that, finally, people are realizing ever more that cultural heritage is a resource - our petroleum,'' critic Sergio Rinaldi Turi wrote a few days ago in the Rome daily Il Messaggero.

Assisi's basilica was one of the few major sites in Italy given painstaking restoration - of the frescoes often attributed to Giotto - and regular maintenance.

Veltroni, the culture minister, is pressing for new legislation that would let state monuments and archeological parks keep their revenues from tourists, instead of turning them over to the state's general coffers.

That would give places like Pompeii, whose 2 million-plus visitors a year make it one of Italy's top draws, the funds for more guards to open up more areas to tourists.

Veltroni brings political clout not usually carried by culture ministers because he is also deputy premier. But the bill has languished in parliament for more than a year.

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PHOTO (color) A friar in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi points to frescoes attributed to medieval master Giotto that were damaged in quakes last week in Italy.

Associated Press