Land of Ruins; Italy is falling apart, literally.

Byline: Barbie Nadeau

The reopening of Rome's magnificent Palazzo delle Esposizioni this month was to be the premier social event of the year. Romans proudly called it "our MoMA," destined to become one of the most prominent cultural centers in Europe. City fathers touted its flawless restoration, costing nearly 20 million euros. The building would have been stupendous--if the ceiling hadn't fallen in two months ago, plunging eight workers onto a pile of sharp rubble and narrowly missing a group of building inspectors who had just left the room below. With a criminal investigation underway, work has stopped and Italians are shrugging off the incident as a bizarre but isolated incident.

Bizarre, yes. Isolated? Hardly. Italy is no stranger to crumbling architecture-- UNESCO has rated 35 percent of Italy's World Heritage Sites as "at risk," not from environmental factors or natural disasters but from "neglect, pollution and indifference." But these days the decay isn't confined to historic ruins. Full city blocks in Florence are cordoned off with red-and-white police tape to protect passersby from falling travertine facades. According to the Legambiente, Italy's environment agency, 40 percent of Italian public schools are in "urgent need of serious maintenance"; authorities in Rome have tasked schoolchildren to report cracks in walls and other potential hazards. In villages of Umbria and Tuscany, cobblestone streets have swallowed cars after underground supports collapsed during recent rains. A slew of ceilings have fallen in on buildings in Rome and Naples. Some have collapsed entirely, among them a two-story apartment house in Liguria that recently killed a young girl as she slept.

Something other than age is at work here. In many cases, experts say, stricter building standards and basic enforcement of existing ...