Rome & Pompeii

[Ebusitanus]

I just came back from a quick Rome-Pompeii marathon trip and I have some impressions-questions.<br>
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For something that surely attracts so many millions of visitors every year at these sites, I´m shocked on what a miserable effort has been made to make most of the places international visitor friendly.<br>
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Almost a total lack of descriptive signs everywhere. If you did not have a guide book with you to interpret what you had in front of you, you would be totally lost. And I´m not even asking for a nice sign describing a bit the place and its history, no, not even signs saying "Constantine Arch".<br>
Most of those signs, when you could locate one, seem to date back from the Mussolini days, old, outdated and rotten.<br>
When you had the incredible luck of finding a more detailed sign near the ruins it was 99% only in Italian.<br>
The same can be said about even Museum displays you visited. 99% of descriptions (With the Dioclecian Thermes as lone exception) everything was just in Italian.<br>
How can such a touristic international hub be so careless about their millions of visitors?<br>
Not to make odious comparaisons but in Spain the majority of archeological displays and museums give you a free multi-language description flier where you can at least get an head start on what you can see and where it is. Signs explaining the pieces are in various languages.<br>
All that was totally missing in Rome, no fliers, no explanation panels. In the National Roman Museum you had one floor plan at the entrance of the floor in Italian to give you directions. Coliseum, Palatine, Forums...nothing..not even a sign saying this freaking temple is the Saturn temple..nothing.<br>
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If you do not have a book with you and some in deep previous study of what you will be visiting you will be miserably lost. A very poor service to such an international magnet of visitors and not something I was used to at all.<br>
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Pompeii was amazing..truly...the same sign problems and them being in Italian did not help.<br>
Question...I was shocked when noticing that almsot half of Pompeii is still under a big layer of earth. Is this on purpose? There was even a private house sitting in the middle of the town doing agriculture above what must be tonns of roman housing and streets. The possible archeological wealth lying there must be compelling. How is that land at least not expropiated?<br>
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more to follow later <p></p><i></i>