By tracking the regional TPL index over the decade, the chart reveals the structural stability of transport efficiency. High TPL scores (indicating better public transport accessibility) are often concentrated in structurally strong Northern regions, which tend to maintain their high rankings consistently. Highly visited regions that frequently rank mid-low (such as Toscana or Campania) highlight a potential infrastructure disparity. This lagging performance in TPL for regions with historically high cultural appeal suggests that inadequate transport infrastructure may indeed be acting as a bottleneck, hindering their ability to efficiently handle tourist flow and fully capitalize on their cultural assets.

In the scatterplot regions are categorized into quadrants that reveal their strategic challenges or strengths: those falling into the Top-Left quadrant (High Cultural Index / Low TPL Index) are immediately identified as areas where infrastructure acts as a critical bottleneck. This quadrant is the area of potential development; assuming these regions could improve their TPL efficiency we can expect them to witness a growth also on the Cultural Index, moving them to the Top-Right quadrant, like Lazio, where a well connected local transportation is facilitating high affluences of tourism, confirming our hypothesis.

The analysis performed across financial inputs, cultural engagement, and infrastructure factors reveals a lack of synchronization among regional policy outcomes, requiring a shift toward strategic planning rooted in structural reality.

• Disparity in Funding Allocation and Visitor Engagement

  The side-by-side comparison of project funding and visitor numbers reveals a definitive mismatch in allocation. Funding distribution does not simply mirror visitor demand: High Visitation without High Funding: Lazio consistently records the highest visitor numbers but does not receive the largest share of project funding. High Funding without High Visitation: Conversely, Campania receives the highest total project funding but does not reach comparable visitor levels.

  This disparity indicates that allocation is often driven by factors other than immediate visitor appeal, such as structural development needs, legacy policy or delays in funding allocation and utilization.

  
  

• Contextualizing Financial Performance: Beyond Pure Profitability

  Despite the investment of public funds, the analysis confirms that financial sustainability remains elusive for most regions. The Net Return Heatmap shows that the majority operate under a state of financial dependency, consistently generating less income (Introiti) than the project funding (Fondi) received. However, this lack of total autonomy must be interpreted through the lens of cultural heritage management, where the primary objective is public value - preservation and access - rather than commercial gain. Consequently, negative returns are often a structural necessity for maintaining non-profit assets in less central areas, rather than a sign of failure.

  Furthermore, the calculated "return" is almost certainly an underestimation of actual financial performance. The dataset used strictly tracks ticket sales, omitting critical revenue streams standard in modern museum management, such as guided tours, merchandising, and venue rentals. This suggests that the actual degree of self-sufficiency is higher than reported. As shown in the breakdown below, while outliers like Lazio and Toscana demonstrate that commercial success is possible, the data also highlights significant reporting gaps, particularly in autonomous regions where "zero income" suggests missing data rather than a complete lack of revenue. The percentage is calculated on the regional average of return and funding.

Self-Suffiency Ratio	Leader	Value (Approx.)	Interpretation
High	Lazio	343%	Lazio generates over three times the revenue it receives in public funding, demonstrating exceptional financial self-sufficiency.
Breakeven	Toscana	100.4%	Toscana is the only other large region to successfully break even, proving its investments are self-sustaining.
Low	Molise, Basilicata	2%	Among the majority of regions with high financial dependency, these regions show extreme results.

Sicilia, Trentino-Alto Adige, Valle d'Aosta: These regions show no recorded income against multi-million euro funding totals, highlighting either severe dependency or significant data gaps that must be investigated.

• The Constraint of Infrastructure Accessibility

The structural reality of transport efficiency presents a constraint that influences both visitor potential and financial outcomes. The scatterplot identifies some regional clusters, including historically significant tourist destinations like Campania and Toscana, that fall into the Bottleneck Quadrant (Top-Left). The mid-low performance in transport efficiency in these high-appeal areas suggests a structural constraint that may inhibit the flow of visitors and limit the economic scaling of cultural assets. This structural reality makes it more challenging for projects in these regions to achieve the financial autonomy necessary for self-sufficiency.




In the Synergy Quadrant (Top-Right) of this analysis we find Lazio, that is the "Star Performer": a region that has successfully balanced cultural value with modern infrastructure. This positioning indicates a strong, sustainable synergy where excellent accessibility supports and amplifies high public interest. This feature represents the benchmark for successful policy integration and should act as a model for the other regions' policies.




At the Bottom-Right Lombardia falls into the Potential Quadrant. This region is highly efficient in its logistics and infrastructure, but its cultural offering or the public interest in it are relatively low. It possesses high growth potential, meaning the infrastructure is already in place. Policy efforts here should utilize this infrastructure to boost cultural heritage tourism, shifting the region toward the Synergy Quadrant.




The same type of analysis can be applied on a smaller scale to most regions. Out of the 20 total, 16 fall into the Lagging quadrant (Bottom-Left), where improvements in the TPL Index tend to coincide with increases in the Cultural Index. Within this group, clear sub-clusters emerge: Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, Liguria, and Piemonte combine well-developed TPL with a Cultural Index between 1 and 2, showing how good transport supports steady visitor flows. Valle d’Aosta, Sicilia, Umbria, Marche, and Emilia-Romagna maintain similar cultural levels despite weaker TPL performance, suggesting latent potential that improved mobility could unlock. At the other end, Molise, Basilicata, Abruzzo, Puglia, Calabria, and Sardegna score low on both indicators and thus face the greatest structural limitations.
Taken together, these patterns suggest a partial causal role for transport: while cultural appeal creates the demand, transport efficiency determines how much of that demand converts into actual visitation - regions with comparable cultural value achieve markedly different outcomes depending on their TPL performance.

This analysis reveals that cultural funding and visitor engagement rarely align perfectly. Funding distribution follows non-commercial policies, leading to a landscape where financial dependency is the norm. However, even with substantial project funding, accessibility remains a critical variable in visiting count. The data shows that regions with high cultural appeal but low efficiency on public transportation struggle to convert potential interest into actual visits. This suggests that bridging the gap between getting funded and getting visited requires more than just heritage investment; it demands a holistic approach that integrates cultural assets with the transport networks needed to reach them.