|Reſlections| Under
|Reſlections| Under Osanna and Zuchtriegel’s watch, the archaeological record, too, has begun to tell a slightly different story about Pompeii that The Great Pompeii Project funds have all been spent. Another is to work to broaden the site’s outreach. In May 2022, 80 students from two local secondary schools put on a production of Aristophanes’ satirical comedy The Birds (updated to reflect their own experience as teenagers in what is today a tough but also eternally creative part of southern Italy) in Pompeii’s ancient theatre. The production has since embarked on a national tour. Under Osanna and Zuchtriegel’s watch, the archaeological record, too, has begun to tell a slightly different story about Pompeii. One obvious example is the “new” dating of that devastating first-century AD eruption of Vesuvius. Until recently, the history books gave this as 24 August, based on literary sources. But the scholarly consensus, Zuchtriegel says, now leans towards an October date, based on clues that include traces of fresh olives and walnuts found in Pompeian kitchens, and the heavy clothing worn by some of the fleeing inhabitants. The type of discoveries that make the news is also changing. Once, Pompeii was associated, above all, with Roman luxury and decadence. Now it’s the city’s underclass – as well as its perhaps 48 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
Expert Advice To get the best out of Pompeii, you need a guide who will do more than skim the surface. Personable Naples-based guide Eliana Sandretti (elianasandretti. com) has worked as an archaeologist on the site, while all three of the Pompeii guides who currently lead the half-day tours offered by Rome-born international operator Context Travel (contexttravel.com) are passionate about the culture and history of the Vesuvian area. WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO DI POMPEI FOR THEIR SUPPORT AND PERMISSIONS surprising multicultural and multiethnic population mix – that is in the headlines. In November 2021, excavations of a villa whose owner was rich enough to own a ceremonial chariot revealed a room assumed to have been used by slaves, where three plank beds were crammed in among storage vessels, harnesses and a chariot shaft. Zuchtriegel describes it as “a window into the precarious reality of people who seldom appear in historical sources”. Pompeii’s 41-year-old director is keen to diversify and broaden the archaeological site’s visitor base to make it “more inclusive, and more accessible”. But already, he declares, “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the visitor experience today has improved immensely compared to, say, ten years ago – in terms of cleanliness, in terms of the services offered, in terms of how much of the site is now open to the public”. The Great Pompeii Project stabilised and made safe the entire 44ha excavated area of Pompeii. Of this, 80 per cent is now visitable on a rotation basis (houses and city blocks are periodically closed to prevent wear and tear), while special reservationonly tours accompanied by archaeologists and other experts are periodically offered to parts of the site that are still the object of ongoing digs and research – like the House of the Painter, where a team from the University of Lausanne is using advanced AI and robotics techniques to piece together the fragments of a decorated ceiling damaged first by the eruption of Vesuvius and later by aerial bombardment during the Second World War. In September 2022, in collaboration with a street festival in the modern town of Pompei, Zuchtriegel even invited a group of street artists to display their work on removable panels in the archaeological site. If this sounds like a desecration, it’s worth remembering that back when it was a thriving Ancient Roman port and commercial hub, Pompeii’s walls were covered in graffiti, some of it political, some merely scurrilous. For the man tasked with overseeing one of the world’s most famous “dead cities”, such meetings between old and new are not provocations, but part of the very nature of Pompeii today. “Every visit”, he explains, “is a meeting between a modern individual and the ancient world.” So bringing video art, street art or contemporary sculpture into the archaeological area is not, he believes, “an add-on … it’s a way of making explicit our daily experience of Pompeii, a way of launching a dialogue about what the past means for us today.” Left: frescoes spanning three walls in the aptly named Villa of Mysteries are widely believed to depict the initiation rites of a Dionysian cult; top: restorer Chiara Ausanio at work on a fresco inside the House of the Chaste Lovers CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 49
