Pompeii (Italy). The most emblematic cultural sites of the peninsula are overwhelmed by waves of tourists and each tries differently to stem these flows which endanger them. Venice has introduced an entrance tax on certain days to visit its historic center while Rome will soon charge for access to the Trevi Fountain. Pompeii, on the other hand, decided to establish a gauge. Since November 15, 20,000 visitors per day have been authorized to enter the archaeological park, visited last year by nearly 4 million tourists. Attendance increased by 30% which exceeds that before the pandemic and which places the site just behind the Colosseum in the list of those most visited in Italy. A success which now calls into question its conservation. “ This gauge essentially responds to security reasons, both for visitors and staff, but also for the protection of heritage, explains its general director Gabriel Zuchtriegel. As the low season begins, we have the opportunity to experiment with this measure. We want to guarantee all visitors a quality experience, it should never be mass tourism, quality must always be at the center. »
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, who is preparing to complete his first mandate at the head of the Pompeii archaeological park, has set his “sustainable growth” as a priority. It benefits from more than 100 million euros of investments between 2024 and 2026, including 25 million euros already planned for its operation. They enabled the opening of a record number of 28 excavation sites currently on the site with an area of approximately 22 ha. Eleven other projects are about to be launched and others are under study. “ More construction sites and fewer tourists » could be the new mantra of Gabriel Zuchtriegel who hopes that the gauge he has just established will offer the opportunity to promote other neighboring cultural sites. Ultimately, however, its intention remains to expand the area that can be visited in Pompeii to be able to accommodate more visitors in better conditions. That “ will allow in the short term, I am convinced, to review this figure of 20,000 visitors which is, I repeat, experimental, he specifies,t decide whether we need to adjust it based on a constantly changing situation”.
Genetic research rewrites the history of Pompeii victims
DNA. These are both the most striking and moving vestiges of the catastrophe. Casts of the bodies of victims of the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed the Roman city in the year 79. Most of them were made in the 19th century and many hypotheses had been developed about their final moments, depending on the position of the bodies and the context of their discovery. Genetic analyzes were carried out by a team from Harvard and Florence universities using bone fragments extracted from casts of the bodies of fourteen inhabitants of the ancient city. They made it possible to correct what was until now considered obvious. The two entwined bodies are not those of sisters as we thought, but at least one of them is that of a man. The person wearing a gold bracelet and holding a child was not his mother but an unrelated man. More generally, DNA revealed that the fourteen individuals analyzed were mainly descended from migrants from the eastern Mediterranean. New proof of the cosmopolitanism of the Pompeii region at the center of important cultural exchanges and frequent population movements.
