Sandbags around statues: protecting heritage in the first weeks
Museum staff packed collections into basements. Conservators abroad sent fire-retardant sheeting and packing materials. UNESCO began documenting damage. Very little of this made the news, and all of it mattered.
In Lviv, people wrapped the stained glass of the Latin Cathedral. In Odesa, they built a wall of sandbags around the Duke de Richelieu. In museum basements across the country, staff who had never expected to do this work were packing icons, manuscripts and paintings into crates.
They needed things: acid-free paper, fire-retardant sheeting, crates, foam, extinguishers, generators. European museums and heritage organisations sent them. The ALIPH foundation, which exists precisely to protect heritage in conflict, opened an emergency programme for Ukraine. UNESCO began documenting damage to cultural sites and marking protected sites with the Blue Shield emblem.
Why I put this in the record
People ask why cultural heritage matters when there are more urgent things. The answer I give is that a country is not only its economy. The archives, the icons, the embroidered cloths, the manuscript collections — these are what a place is. They are also, unlike a bridge, entirely irreplaceable. A bridge can be rebuilt. A fifteenth-century icon cannot.
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