Neglected ruins of Pompeii declared a 'disgrace to Italy'

From the Society of Antiquaties SALON site:

"Pompeii, which was declared ‘a disgrace’ by Italy’s President, Giorgio Napolitano, following the collapse on 6 November of the Schola Armaturarum Juventus Pompeiani (‘the House of the Gladiators’), destroying the frescos of gladiators that gave the building its name. Corriere della Serra said the state of Pompeii symbolised ‘the sloppiness and inefficiencies of a country that has lost its good sense’.

The collapse has drawn attention to the scale of the task facing Pompeii’s custodians, the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli e Pompei (SANP) and the Italian culture ministry. Our Fellow Andrew Wallace-Hadrill told the media that: ‘It is quite possible to spend tens of millions [on maintenance] and still not protect the site. It’s not that we have Roman houses in a pristine state, nor were they ever built or intended to last for ever. Ultimately these [structures] are so unique that we’re trying to get more out of them than they were ever designed to do.’

In its report on the collapse, the Guardian said that the Berlusconi government has made deep cuts to state spending on heritage spending, cutting maintenance budgets for the nation as a whole from €30m to €19m. Added to this is the habit of visitors of taking bits of Pompeii home as a souvenir. Faced with these problems, says Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ‘it is insulting to suggest that Pompeii is being neglected by its custodians: these people are doing the best that they can in a difficult situation because they love the site’.

Italy’s Culture Minister, Sandro Bondi, has responded to the situation by announcing the establishment of a new foundation to assess the state of decay and deciding what action to take. Critics are concerned that Bondi favours the restoration of a select number of prestige buildings, rather than what they believe is necessary, which is a programme of continuous small-scale maintenance across the whole of Pompeii, as has been practised successfully at nearby Herculaneum, where the Soprintendenza, the Packard Humanities Institute, an American philanthropic foundation, and the British School at Rome have been working together on the largest private heritage sponsorship scheme in Italy.

Sarah Court, a British archaeologist working on the Herculaneum conservation project, says the aim is not to fix the odd ‘dodgy’ mosaic but to deal with the root cause. At Herculaneum that means tackling site drainage with the strategic placement of guttering and the use of pumps to remove rain and groundwater from the site. ‘Because nobody lives there any more’, she says, ‘there is nobody to do the necessary DIY on a regular basis.'"