Leaders at the MaXXI Museum in Rome and Venice’s civic museums are among the high-profile cultural figures calling on the Italian government to create a “national fund for culture” in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

The museum chiefs have signed a petition launched by the culture advocacy group Federculture which states that “we have to make Italian culture live, to give it oxygen… the repercussions of the coronavirus crisis on the vast world of cultural enterprise are extreme and could be fatal”.