Pompeii 'a symbol of Italy's sloppiness'

[Viggen]

For visitors to Pompeii, they are a guaranteed crowd pleaser: erotic frescoes, including one of Priapus, the god of fertility, adorning the walls of a 2,000 year old Roman villa. Or rather they were until two years ago, when the House of the Vettii closed for a restoration project which was supposed to last a year but which still grinds on, the villa encased in scaffolding and a sign outside offering no indication of when it might reopen. Pompeii may be the best preserved Roman city in the world, thanks to the volcanic ash from nearby Mt Vesuvius which smothered it after a catastrophic eruption in AD79, but critics say years of neglect and indifference have turned it into an international embarrassment and an emblem of the dysfunction which plagues so much of Italian public life...

 

...read the full article at the Telegraph

 

 

[GhostOfClayton]

When I visited Pompeii, I was so blown away by the place that I didn't look at it with a more cynical eye. On sober reflection (that's just a saying, I wasn't drunk!) everything said in the article seems true enough. Two things struck me. The first is that 11 euros is an ab-sol-ute bargain for the place - it really is! Especially for the likes of the readers of this forum. The second is that it's gobsmacking to think that, given the sheer amount of 11 euros they collect in, it still doesn't cover the maintenance of the place, let alone fund further excavation. Maybe they could learn a lesson or two from Vindolanda.

 

Lastly, I read the comment after the article by 'emmasue'. She (I assume she is a she) was rightly bemoaning the inaccesibility of Trajan's Column on her visit to Rome. For those of you who find yourselves in The Smoke, there is a full size replica (taken from a plaster cast) of Trajan's Column in the Victoria and Albert. Because of the sheer size of the thing, it's difficult to study close up, but it's very impressive, nevertheless.

[Melvadius]

It is impressive although I seem to remember from when I last visited that the column has been split into two parts and you also could not get too close to it as you are confined to a walkway rather than allowed to wander about the room that it is in.

 

Anyone who can get to Bucharest possibly has a better chance of getting a good view of individual panels as the Muzeul Naţional de Istorie a Rom

[GhostOfClayton]

You're right Melvadius, it is in two halves. You can get right up to the base, but the interesting detail doesn't start until the top of the base, some 6 metres up (at least). The best view is of the spiral at the bottom of the top half. It's also visible from a walkway at first floor level, but some distance away.

 

I've now added "Muzeul Naţional de Istorie a Rom

[Maladict]

The museum in EUR (Rome) has (finally) put their copy on display as of 2008 or so. IIRC this copy and the one in Bucharest are the only casts made from the original.

The one in Romania is much better presented though, I really enjoyed it. The Roman copy is displayed in a cramped corridor and doesn't have the base and capital.

[Maladict]

The second is that it's gobsmacking to think that, given the sheer amount of 11 euros they collect in, it still doesn't cover the maintenance of the place, let alone fund further excavation.

 

It might be sufficient, if it weren't for the Camorra collecting most of it.

 

Maybe they could learn a lesson or two from Vindolanda.

 

Just wait until the Geordie mob get their hands on it..

[Virgil61]

I thought something was up with how the Italians in charge were running the place if only because they seem to be trying to prevent or slow down any potential discoveries of books from the Villa Papyri. The possibility of finding more volumes of Livy as well as lost writings of other ancients (in carbon cinder rolls) seems like the quest of the century to me.

[DecimusCaesar]

 

Lastly, I read the comment after the article by 'emmasue'. She (I assume she is a she) was rightly bemoaning the inaccesibility of Trajan's Column on her visit to Rome. For those of you who find yourselves in The Smoke, there is a full size replica (taken from a plaster cast) of Trajan's Column in the Victoria and Albert. Because of the sheer size of the thing, it's difficult to study close up, but it's very impressive, nevertheless.

 

I'd very much want to visit Pompeii, especially recently after a family member brought back photographs from the site. I was lucky enough to get to see the plaster cast of Trajan's column at the Victoria and Albert museum a few years back though.

[Ludovicus]

I thought something was up with how the Italians in charge were running the place if only because they seem to be trying to prevent or slow down any potential discoveries of books from the Villa Papyri. The possibility of finding more volumes of Livy as well as lost writings of other ancients (in carbon cinder rolls) seems like the quest of the century to me.

 

I find the research on the Villa Papyri papyri fascinating. Can you update us on what texts have been discovered and read in the last year or so?

[Ludovicus]

Here's today's New York Times article on the second garbage crisis in two years to hit the Naples to Pompeii area:

 

For years, Mr. Berlusconi has been able to survive with jokes and grandiose promises. But now, as he struggles to keep a grip on his unruly center-right coalition, his popular consensus is plummeting as Italians grow weary of government infighting that seems at odds with their everyday concerns.

 

Here in Terzigno, a grim town of concrete houses just miles from Pompeii, there may be the first stirrings of a Nimby problem with national ramifications: Not only do residents in the area not want garbage in their backyard, but for the first time since they first helped elect him in 1994, they also do not appear to want Mr. Berlusconi there.