Many films about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae in 79 A.D. are highly fictionalized. However, nowadays we can reconstruct the dynamics of the facts of an event that has remained in history as one of the most devastating natural disasters that hit Italy.
Pompeii was a prosperous Roman town that once stood at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. The inhabitants were unaware that the Green Giant (the sides of the mountain were covered with vegetation and vineyards and olive trees) could pose a threat. In fact, there were 700 years that the volcano gave no signs of life, so they did not worry too much when, between the 20th and the 24th of August in 79 A.D., a series of earthquakes shook the houses. Some roofs collapsed making the first victims. Then all was quiet again, the people returned to their homes convinced that the danger had passed. On the morning of August the 25th, first thick clouds thick clouds rose up, then came a tremendous explosion. Vesuvius had awakened. Within hours, a column of smoke rose up to tens of kilometers going to blot out the sun. However, Pompeiians didn’t understand yet to be on the verge of tragedy, so only a few escaped. Most of them took refuge in the house and cellars. In the sky of Pompeii a disaster was unleashed. A mix of ash, gas and rocks began falling on the city, the Pompeiians spilled out of the houses in the futile effort to escape. Suffocated by smoke, they fell in the streets or in the gardens, and over their bodies meters of debris were deposited. Fared no better in those who had managed to reach the beaches, because the sea, bubbling because of the heat, rose to high waves. The earthquake had become a tidal wave. While Pompeii was covered by volcanic debris, on the nearby Herculaneum had fallen only a thin layer of ash. The inhabitants did not want to abandon their homes and had no escape when the volcano rushed to the speed of a hurricane (160 mph) huge amounts of fiery boulders that broke down the houses and killed everyone. The eruption of Vesuvius had lasted just over 25 hours, during which the volcano had expelled nearly a billion cubic meters of material. The Roman Empire sent his army to help the people, but the devastation was such that no one thought to rebuild the city. For centuries Pompeii and Herculaneum were lost even in the memory. Then, in the eighteenth century, some farmers digging in their fields ran into coins, columns, human skeletons: the ancient Pompeii had been found. Around 1860 the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli began to carry out systematic excavations. He also thought of throwing liquid plaster into the cavities left in the hardened ground: that was an empty space left by the human bodies that centuries ago had decomposed. He got so the perfect casts, showing the victims in the position where they died. The archaeological area of Pompeii is the largest archaeological site in the world, and one of the most visited. Take your family on a guided tour of Pompeii with us. Be a time traveler! Visit our site now and view our available tours. We look forward to seeing you.
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The Greeks “conquer” the ancient Pompeii. A new emotion awaits the tourists of the "Queen of archeology”. From April 14 until November 27 the Big Gym of the Excavations of Pompeii will host the exhibition "Pompeii and the Greeks": over 600 exhibits that tell the history of the encounter between the Pompeian civilization with the Greek world, through an immersive signed "Graphics eMotion”. The exhibition, curated by the Director General of Pompeii Massimo Osanna and Carlo Rescigno of the University of Campania, is promoted by the Pompeii Superintendency.
"Pompeii and the Greeks” tells the stories of a meeting: starting from an Italian town, Pompeii, it shows the frequent contact with the Greek civilization, following craftsmen, architects, decorative styles, focusing on precious imported objects but also on inscriptions in Greek on city walls, they focus the many different souls of an ancient city, its temporary and unstable identity. Over 600 exhibits including ceramics, ornaments, weapons, architectural elements, sculptures from Pompeii, Stabiae, Sorrento, Cuma, Capua, Poseidonia, Metaponto, Torre di Satriano and even inscriptions in different languages spoken - Greek, Etruscan, Paleoitalic - , silver and Greek sculptures reproduced in Roman times. The exhibition is a scientific project and ongoing research that for the first time shed light on unknown stretches of Pompeii: objects coming from leading national and European museums are divided into 13 thematic sections. This exhibition reconstructs the Greek appearances before Pompeii, the forms of the ancient city, the changes imposed in the Gulf after the foundation of Naples - of which are exposed unpublished material from the bottom of the seaport - until the Roman world. Thanks to this event, many Italian documents and monuments emigrated abroad came back. For example, visitors can see the helmets donated to Olympia by Ieron, the tyrant of Syracuse, to celebrate the victory of the Cumans on the Etruscans in a battle fought on the waters of the Gulf of Naples. It will be possible to rediscover, in the fragments of a monumental crater from Altamura, in Apulia, the story of Alexander the Great's battle against the Persian king Darius, in the same manner and in the same pattern that was made almost two centuries later in the "Great Mosaic" of the House of the Faun. From two drain, two garbage dumps, one found in the Agora of Athens, the great square of the main center of the Greek world, and one at the arcades of Pompeii hole, it is possible to observe the similarities between objects and tools that show forms of similar experience in the two centers in the second century BC. The exhibition design, which occupies the space of the Gymnasium of Pompeii, is designed by the Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and includes three immersive audiovisual installations curated by the Canadian company GeM (Graphic eMotion). “Pompeii and the Greeks” illustrates the visitors the charm of a non-linear historical narrative, composed of multiple and contradictory identity, by layered languages, consciously re-used: the history of the Mediterranean area. A narrative that suggests a comparison and a reflection on our contemporary time with its dynamism made of migration and conflict, whit its encounters and clashes of cultures. The Pompeii exhibit is the first stage of an exhibition program carried out jointly with the Archaeological Museum of Naples: in June there will start an exhibition dedicated to the Greek myths in Pompeii and the Roman world. See Pompeii as it once was and book our special guided tour with Virtual Reality headsets! Twelve ancient fountains were restored in the Pompeii ruins thanks to the Great Pompeii Project: eight of them were prepared for water supply. They were encrusted with calcareous material, mosses and lichens mixed with terrain that covered the friezes 2,000 years ago subtracting from the original beauty: now, some of the fountains of ancient Pompeii have been restored and the work of cleaning, performed by the Opificio Pietre Dure of Florence (an institute of the Italian Ministry of Culture), returned the monumental value of the "totem" of drinking water present in the excavations. Among these, there is the white fountain of the goddess Concordia: it represents the face of a woman with big eyes, with earrings at her lobes, a soft robe and a cornucopia for which was mistaken for the Goddess of Abundance. Due to this misconception, the first archaeologists gave the name “Via dell’Abbondanza” (Street of the Abundance) to one of the main streets of the ancient city of Pompeii.
There are 40 fountains scattered around in the streets of the ruins of Pompeii, dispensers of free water to the tourists, but also - for decades - put at risk their conservation. One of the Superintendence’s project has finally started the restructuring and rationalization. "This first operation carried out to the fountains with the funds of the Great Pompeii Project, concerned at the time the fountains along the route "Pompeii for all" only - explains the general director of the excavations, Massimo Osanna - thanks to the experience and expertise of the “Opificio delle Pietre Dure”, which we have used for the works of cleaning and consolidation, with a result of great excellence that has given splendor to an important part of urban ancient Pompeii. It is important what they did both for the history of water supply in the ancient town and their aesthetic value". The project had a cost of about 150,000 euros, and will be followed by another one concerning the remaining fountains, who will be paid by ordinary funds. The fountains of ancient Pompeii are mostly in blocks of lava stone, and dark gray. The oldest are in gray tuff. "They are all beautiful for the emotions they give, because they still show signs of workmanship of the artisans that have shaped them and the wear suffered by the inhabitants of Pompeii before the eruption of 79 AD." says Alberta Martellone, one of the archaeologists who participated on the restoration project. The water system is connected to the one of the new city of Pompeii and it was already active in the '30s. Indeed, there is an image of the Istituto Luce (an institute created during the Fascist era involved in the production and distribution of films and documentaries intended for being screened in cinemas) that depicts the fountain of the crossroads of the Holconi with Pablo Picasso visiting to the ruins, accompanied by Jean Cocteau. "Some dispensers were cemented and the salts of the concrete infiltrated the stone blocks with the risk of splitting them" explains architect Gianluca Vitagliano, director of works. The protective treatment for stone materials will prevent a further deterioration. Book your time-traveling tour through ancient Pompeii with our licensed guides and a VR headset to see how Pompeii looked 2,000 years ago. View your tour options here. Preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples are the individual islets and homes, as they appeared at the time of realization of the cork model of the excavations, created between 1861 and the 1929. This experience is now possible thanks to the 3D model produced by the Institute for Cultural and monumental heritage of the CNR.
"It is a powerful study tool - explains Daniele Malfitana, director of IBAM-Cnr - but also of disclosure. Produced through an original methodology of "macro-aerophotogrammetry" by the specialists of the Laboratory of Archaeology and immersive multimedia IBAM, the plastic 3D trip also returns the image of contexts no longer visible today, for the loss of decorative walls and equipment". The project results is presented today, Monday, February 20th at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples by the Director Paolo Giulierini and the Director of IBAM-Cnr Daniele Malfitana. The construction of the plastic in wood and cork in 1: 100 scale of Pompeii was initiated in 1861 and continued until 1879. It currently doesn’t cover the entire surface excavated and was implemented with other pieces until 1929. The process of digitization and 3D modeling has committed archaeologists (G. Amara) and specialists of multimedia techniques (S. Barone, G. Fragalà and D. Pavone) in an accurate photographic documentation campaign carried out on the field. Via a mobile cart built to perform the "photographic crawl" on the area of plastic and through an original methodology of "macro-aerophotogrammetry", specialists have been able to acquire the data set needed to transform into 3D of many structures and home, which from now on will be perfectly navigable. The plastic of Pompeii, as conservative reproduction of how the archaeological excavation was at the time, returns a reconstructive picture of now irrevocably lost contexts, of the wall decorations in advanced decay, of lost plasters and environments of which the plastic is sometimes the only witness. “Our study - says Malfitana - wants to give voice to this extraordinary witness and to the stories related to it, without neglecting the extraordinary social and popular value of the two models, the cork and the virtual ". The CNR of Catania has worked since 2015 on a plastic clone of Pompeii, using the same three-dimensional scanning technique tested in Pompeii for the necropolis of Porta Nocera, where the Sicilian archaeologists are busy with the German team of the Pompeii Sustainable Preservation Project, the international project coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics in Stuttgart, the Institute of restoration of the University of Monaco of Bavaria, the Pompeii Superintendence and involves the participation, in addition to the IBAM-CNR, also of the University of Oxford , of the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Monaco of Bavaria, of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Rome and the University of Pisa. “The prestigious collaboration with the Ibam-Cnr - says Giulierini - confirms the will of the museum to be opened to scientific collaborations of excellence in view of the strengthening of research and a more dynamic use of the museum heritage ". Come join us on an adventure through time by booking one of our special guided tours through the ruins of Pompeii. The French, after the glories of the Napoleonic era, are to return to "dominate" Pompeii. A consortium of French entrepreneurs has a project to invest 2 million per year until 2027.
This was confirmed by spokesman of the European Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Cretu that on the 9th of February visited Pompeii with the Italian Minister of Culture Dario Franceschini, to take stock of the situation of the European funding of the Great Pompeii Project. “The involvement of the French group in one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world is a proof that the private can be a key resource to be attached to the public” said the spokesman. The public-private synergy has become a trend that is spreading around the world and that the European Union looks favorably, according to Mrs. Cretu. This should not mean a disengagement of the public to the private, but a synergy for the protection and enhancement of the main sites of historical and artistic interest. A thesis shared also by UNESCO, increasingly concerned about the degradation in which some places elected "World Heritage" are. Returning to the French funding, it must be said that in 2011 Pompeii was already part of a business project which, however, after a long negotiation, has never started. Now it seems that it will end positively. It is not a coincidence that the United Nations are acting as guarantor to the new project. The new French consortium interested in investing (thanks to the tax deduction that in France 'covers' of up to 60 percent of the loan) has also names which were already listed in the old group of 2011 (very close to the former French president Nicholas Sarkozy). But now the air seems changed and the 'cartel' of new investors, gathered around the architect Philippe Chaix can count on the "blessing" of the French government, currently performing "image" which also passes through the sponsorship of cultural projects outside of national boundaries. In Pompeii, the French will start immediately with the restoration of three domuses (houses) currently closed to the public, then they will continue with the recovery of a large area designated by the Superintendent. The Italo-French agreement for the plan Save Pompeii also has the approval of Franceschini and the superintendent of Pompeii, Massimo Osanna, who said: "To ensure full transparency of the project we have changed the procurement code that will not allow anymore the mechanism, often perverse, of the subcontracts ". But in practice, what are the jobs that the French finance? “I have proposed the first three houses to the French - explains the superintendent - among the most beautiful of Pompeii, in need of restoration work. The agreement is ten years of duration and it will involve large companies with equality between us and them”. Finally, as reported by the Ambassador Francesco Caruso, consultant of the President of the Regione Campania for International Relations and UNESCO, there is also a project of restoration and enhancement of eight more sites in Campania under the protection of the United Nations. |
AuthorStaff at Flashback Journey to Pompeii. Our goal is to bring you up-to-date information on events, continuing archeological excavations and more on Pompeii. Archives
July 2018
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