Abstract

This article explores the ineradicable dialectic tension between protection and development arising from the complexity of facts and unavoidably resulting in a "complication" of both the regulatory framework and the administrative management of cultural heritage. In particular, the article explains why this tension has produced, in the last decades, a sharp "oscillation" in the production of rules (and in the directions of legal policy) between two opposite poles: the absoluteness (or primacy) of cultural heritage, on the one side, and, a tendency to equalize cultural heritage interests with interests in transformation and land consumption, which are more directly linked to a "quantitative vision" of development and growth. Then this script focuses on proportionality as a criterion providing internal logic to discretionarytechnical decisions on cultural heritage protection.