Since 2011 (when it was still the ‘Federico Stella’ Centre for Studies on Criminal Justice and Criminal Policy - CSGP), ASGP has been cultivating, mostly with institutional resources, a permanent research and action line on the protection of cultural heritage from illicit trafficking and other criminal offences, as well as on the regulation of the art and antiquities market.
 

The protection of cultural heritage requires an integrated and multidisciplinary approach, capable of combining legal expertise with historical, artistic, economic and institutional perspectives. In this field, ASGP promotes research and educational initiatives aimed at analysing national and international legal frameworks, strengthening prevention and enforcement strategies, and developing effective responses to crimes affecting cultural heritage, with a focus on the increasing transnational dimension of art and cultural heritage crimes and their links to other kinds of criminality including fraud, money laundering, organised crime, terrorism, tax evasion, corruption and related offences.
 

A leader in the research and training on these issues, ASGP benefits from a well-established network of national and international collaborations, including those with CNPDS (Centro Nazionale di Prevenzione e Difesa Sociale – National Centre for Prevention and Social Defence) and ISPAC (International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Programme), the Art Law Centre of the University of Geneva, the Law & Popular Culture Research Network coordinated by Maastricht University, the Center for Cultural Heritage and Technology of the Italian Institute of Technology (CCHT-IIT), the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, and other partners. Since its establishment in 2022, ASGP has also been a partner of the UNESCO Chair on Market Integrity and Crime Prevention in the Art and Antiquities Market.

Amongst its long-lasting training and public engagement activities, ASGP supports the open seminars “Conversations on Law & the Arts”, started in 2022 and organized yearly.

Further activities carried out by ASGP in this field include a wide range of conferences and other public events, publications, the participation of its researchers as experts in national and international working groups, and training activities. Amongst the latter, since 2026 ASGP has been organizing an international Summer School on "Art and Cultural Heritage: Law, Policy and Practice".  
 

As a free service to international market operators, public officers, LEAs, and any other stakeholders, ASGP also regularly updates and publishes a comprehensive annotated unofficial English translation of Italian criminal law provisions concerning cultural heritage.
 

All the above mentioned initiatives benefit from close interaction with other thematic areas traditionally addressed by ASGP, ranging from economic crime to organised crime, from compliance and fight against corruption to environmental protection, from restorative justice to law & literature. This integrated and multidisciplinary approach supports the development of innovative research and intervention strategies, attentive to evolving practical needs and emerging challenges.