Luca Maria Olivieri, a Roman archaeologist, will oversee the Italian expedition to Pakistan, seventy years after the renowned orientalist Giuseppe Tucci, the first to investigate the Swat Valley, the birthplace of Buddhism and the site where the West encountered the East in Alexander the Great’s aspirations of conquest. The seventieth anniversary of the Mission, overseen by ISMEO and the University of Venice Ca' Foscari, will be honored on December 13th at Castel Madama, following the earlier commemoration held on October 25th in Saidu Sharif, with significant local resonance and the participation (also expected in Italy) of the heir to the Miangul family, which ruled Swat until 1969. The Pakistani press has noted that the Italian Mission has endured earthquakes, floods, and the Taliban insurrection that also damaged the renowned Jahanabad Buddha in 2007, which was subsequently restored. "The protection of Pakistan's heritage", Professor Olivieri explained to the newspaper Il Foglio, "has consistently been a fundamental aspect of the Mission's philosophy since Tucci recognized the importance of establishing a museum alongside the excavations. The museum was inaugurated in 1963 with Italian and Pakistani funding on land donated by the King of Swat, but it was destroyed in 2008 by a Taliban attack on a nearby dormitory. We undertook its reconstruction, and it was reopened in 2013. Currently, it exhibits 2,200 artifacts, with over 60,000 items stored in reserve".