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One of Pompeii’s many ghostly streets
Photo by Niccolò Graffio
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By Niccolò Graffio
“He that would know what shall be, must consider what hath been.” – H.G. Bohn: Handbook of Proverbs, 1855.
“A building once used by gladiators in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii - one of the world's most important archaeological sites - has collapsed.”
The words leapt off my computer screen as I sat there drinking my coffee. “What the....?” I thought to myself. I had just returned from a vacation to (Southern) Italy about a month earlier. Part of my tour of il Sud was a trip to Pompeii. Though we did not see the famous “House of the Gladiators”, the news was disconcerting, to say the least.
How could something like this happen? More importantly, how could anyone allow this to happen? I wanted answers!
To anyone who doesn’t already know, Pompeii was a town located near Naples that was founded by the Osci, a central Italic people, sometime late in the 7th century BC. It changed hands several times over the centuries before finally coming under the authority of Rome at the end of the Samnite Wars (343–290 BC).
It remained loyal to Rome until it joined the rebellion during the Social War (91-88 BC) when it was captured by the armies of the Roman General Lucius Cornelius Sulla. Sulla annexed the city to the Roman Republic, expelling a large percentage of its population and granting lands to his victorious soldiers.
Under the Romans the city’s infrastructure was vastly expanded and modernized. Among other things, two amphitheatres, public baths and a palaestra were built. In addition, numerous villas to accommodate the city’s wealthier Romans were constructed. The city became famous as a vacation destination. At its height, it is believed to have had a population of about 20,000.
All that came to an end on or about August 24th, 79 AD when Mt. Vesuvius, “the Evil Old Lady of Italy”, violently erupted, destroying Pompeii along with the towns of Herculaneum, Stabiae and Oplontis. Serious work to excavate the cities didn’t begin until the middle part of the 18th century. The Bourbon kings used the antiquities discovered to reinforce the political and cultural power of the Kingdom of Naples.
This brings us back to the present. Most of the city of Pompeii (90% in fact) has been excavated, revealing a wealth of archaeological treasures, many of which are now sitting in museums in Italy, and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, many others are still sitting in Pompeii and Herculaneum, where they are being allowed to slowly decompose, along with buildings such as the now-destroyed House of the Gladiators. For a place that attracts about 2.5 million visitors a year (UNESCO estimate), this is nothing less than a disgrace to the country of Italy!
It wasn’t always this way. In 1924 Benito Mussolini appointed the famed Neapolitan archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri as Chief Archaeologist over the Pompeii site. He served in that capacity until 1961. By all accounts he worked with an almost superhuman fervour in excavating, cataloguing and preserving Pompeii’s priceless antiquities. To him it was a labor of love!
The first visitors to the newly liberated city caught a glimpse of a time long gone; a window into the ancient Roman world. Things have changed quite a bit in only 50 years.
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| Stray dog in the Tepidarium Photo by New York Scugnizzo |
Things have gotten so bad that two years ago Italy’s Milanese PM Silvio Berlusconi (perhaps the country’s biggest disgrace) declared the Pompeii site a “disaster zone”. Never mind the fact this was a proverbial case of the pot calling the kettle black, Berlusconi, instead of rectifying the situation, has actually helped to exacerbate it!
He appointed a man named Renato Profili as commissioner of the site. Instead of dealing with the real problems Pompeii is facing, Profili devoted much of his time chasing away the prostitutes who congregate around its periphery, when he wasn’t encouraging tourists to adopt one of the many stray dogs found there.
His “Cave Canem” project must be a resounding success, since this writer still saw stray dogs while he was in Pompeii.
To be sure, dogs are not the only cause of Pompeii’s problems. As mentioned previously, exposure to the elements as well as poor drainage contributes mightily to the site’s deterioration. Since the collapse of the House of the Gladiators, two more structures in Pompeii have shared its fate. All that, plus Italy’s looming sovereign debt crisis do not bode well for the future of one of Italy’s most famous landmarks. Sadly, the same can be said for many of Italy’s other historical treasures.
In the city of Naples, for example, I witnessed what could only be described as a horror! During a tour of the Castel Nuovo Museo Civico I noticed virtually no safeguards were in place to protect the paintings from the ravages of time and the elements. Upon first entering the museum I sensed something was seriously wrong when we were handed wrinkled, coffee-stained, photocopies of pamphlets describing the museum. Worse still, we were asked to return them when our tour was over!
Roaming the halls, it was hard not to notice the lack of temperature and humidity controls. Just as badly, the paintings were left exposed to the ionizing effects of the sun’s rays pouring through windows. I literally wanted to cry when I saw flecks of paint coming off some of the most beautiful paintings in the building. When one leaves a museum one expects to be filled with a sense of wonder, not rage!
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Annunciazione by Ignoto Pittore Napoletano. The glare was caused by sunlight;
I never use a flash when photographing paintings!
Photo by New York Scugnizzo
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What is the excuse for this? Across town at the National Archaeological Museum things were a world apart! The paintings and statues were protected by the proper temperature and humidity controls and sheltered from the sun’s rays. Why the difference?
My companion, Giovanni di Napoli and I could only notice the National Archaeological Museum contained statues and frescos from ancient Greco-Roman times along with paintings from famous Renaissance and Baroque masters. The Castel Nuovo Museo Civico, on the other hand, contained works from lesser known masters from Southern Italy such as Luca Giordano, Francesco de Mura and Mattia Preti.
Is that it then? Could it be that Italian authorities in Rome put a premium on antiquities from ancient times? How then, does one explain the recent debacles at Pompeii?
Could it be more likely, the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which is known to house the most important collection of Greco-Roman antiquities in Italy, is the sole beneficiary of an otherwise corrupt, inefficient system that has historically looked down upon anything produced in more recent centuries by Southern Italians? I’m left to wonder.
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