The inner court of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, part of the new Nuovi Uffizi restoration project. Photograph: Fabrizio Giovannozzi/AP
When a government has to tighten its belt, the first thing to get slashed is usually the arts budget. Well, Italy's centre-left government has just shown that it doesn't have to be like that.
The main aim of its 2007 budget was to squeeze the country's budget deficit and get it within the Eurozone's self-imposed limit of 3% of GDP. Admittedly, much of the difference is expected to come from tax increases rather than spending cuts. But this was still meant to be a year in which every centesimo was being watched.
Yet, earlier this month, it emerged that the kitty that supplies funds for the performing arts is to be boosted by a whacking 17%. The so-called Fondo unico per lo spettacolo (FUS) was capped or drained repeatedly under the previous centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi.
Now, not only has the trend been reversed, but the government is planning for the FUS to be enlarged in the next two years. By 2009 - if the centre-left remains in power - it should be as ample in real terms as it was six years ago when Berlusconi came into office.
It needs to be stressed that we are not talking about the entire culture budget, but it is nevertheless a welcome shot in the arm for Italy's film-makers, theatre producers, dance companies and opera houses.
One reason for the change is simply that the centre-left is keener on subsidies for the arts than the right, which tried without much success to get Italians to warm to notions of commercial and private sponsorship. But the other reason is that Italy, perhaps uniquely in Europe, has a heavy-hitting culture minister.
Francesco Rutelli is both leader of Democracy and Freedom, the second-biggest party in Romano Prodi's government, and one of Prodi's two deputies. If he bangs a table, people jump.
When the portfolios were being handed out last May, Rutelli insisted his should also include tourism. It may have been no more than a ploy to ensure he got responsibilities commensurate with his status, but the fact is that he has a point: visitors are increasingly lured to other countries by their cultural attractions.
At all events, Prodi - and his finance minister - seem to have bought his argument that a country that neglects its arts is doing itself real and practical economic harm.
