Disaster strikes Pompeii... Collapse of several walls

[Robert Vermaat]

Not just a few historical sites in Texas have been dropped by the State

Did they break anything?

[M. Demetrius]

:lol:

Well, sort of. There is an 1830s wood palisade fort near here. At first, it was in predictable disrepair, was owned privately, then taken over by the State of Texas, which determined after restoration, that it was too expensive to keep all the logs in good, safe condition, ceded it to private individuals again, who eventually turned it over to two small towns and the county. Constant maintenance on log palisades, as the logs below ground rot in a few years and need to be replace. Steady work, but not productive.

It is a really cool place. Visitors can climb into the corner blockhouses, peer out the rifle slits (and there are some slits in the floor, for defending the gates from above), etc. Certain times of the year, there are reenactment events held there, and the public is invited during daylight. But without the constant repairs and inspections, partly by the reenactors who use the fort, the place would continually be unsafe, and would long ago have ceased to exist except in photographs.

It's not any one country: it's the will of a government to keep things repaired and operational, based on whether the object/site is deemed important enough to include funding from stretched, dwindling budgets. I'm very sure that as the economic problems continue to mount, archeological and cultural funds will be cut further, and more artifacts and historical treasures everywhere will suffer. Sure, we Texans are proud of our own history, but paving roads, tending to special problems in society, and other fiscal drains take precedence over repairing old forts which have historical significance known only to a few.
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/find ... rt_parker/

The Alamo, however, is mostly in pretty good repair, still a church in which people come to worship, and gets significant funding (although I'm sure the operators and their staff would like more). Why one site gets the money and another doesn't is not something I clearly understand, or could write intelligently.

[Luca]

Pompei is just one of the millions of shames in Italy.
Collapsing fo some walls can be a "natural" thing for 1950 years old walls, the scandal is that too few things are in place to mantain the site.
I have read recently a 10 pages report on one arechological magazine (Archeo) that summarizes last 30 years of bad managing of Pompeii and responsabilities have to be shared from the Government leaders to the last of the men working on the site. Inefficence, bad laws, thiefs, lazy people: a classic in Italy.
Do you know that Pompeii in 2009 had 20 millions euros that was not possible to spend because the italian law didn't admin that? Do you know that for the current law Pompeii cannot hire any more people? This means also that if someone retires, it cannot be substituted...!
Incredible eh?
What about security? There is nothing, basically during the night anyone can rob what he wants. Yes during the day can rob the same as tourist...
During this year a stupid decision was ot basically rebuild the Pompeii's theater destroying the ancient structures (the ones that were not visible such as the idraulic system to launch parfumed water over the spectators), but to do this the government "decided" that it was a "national emergency" and involved the "Civil Protection" to make that job by passing the current laws...

There is an idea in the parliament: to ask to some foreign heritage manager company to manage Pompeii....

[Ron Andrea]

Wow. That's sad.

[M. Demetrius]

Well, of course, most of our ruins are not as old, but there is the same idea here. Some frontier "forts" are just a couple of piles of rocks, if that, and a building with some old sketches and photos. They weren't built to last, admittedly, but they were ignored just as much. Only in a few instances, and almost all of those were managed by private owners, were buildings and structures kept in working order. Williamsburg in Virginia is a good example of good management, filled with living historians and well-kept buildings. However, if you think about it, there were hundreds of towns that size and design, and not a handful of buildings still exist.

It's a sad thing in every way to those of us who really appreciate historical objects and locations. Most people don't really care, so not much gets done.

[Vindex]

Pompei is just one of the millions of shames in Italy.
Collapsing fo some walls can be a "natural" thing for 1950 years old walls, the scandal is that too few things are in place to mantain the site.
I have read recently a 10 pages report on one arechological magazine (Archeo) that summarizes last 30 years of bad managing of Pompeii and responsabilities have to be shared from the Government leaders to the last of the men working on the site. Inefficence, bad laws, thiefs, lazy people: a classic in Italy.
Do you know that Pompeii in 2009 had 20 millions euros that was not possible to spend because the italian law didn't admin that? Do you know that for the current law Pompeii cannot hire any more people? This means also that if someone retires, it cannot be substituted...!
Incredible eh?
What about security? There is nothing, basically during the night anyone can rob what he wants. Yes during the day can rob the same as tourist...
During this year a stupid decision was ot basically rebuild the Pompeii's theater destroying the ancient structures (the ones that were not visible such as the idraulic system to launch parfumed water over the spectators), but to do this the government "decided" that it was a "national emergency" and involved the "Civil Protection" to make that job by passing the current laws...

There is an idea in the parliament: to ask to some foreign heritage manager company to manage Pompeii....

I find it despicable never mind sad! And it must be soul destroying for archaeologists in Italy.

But there is no guarantee that a foreign company would be able to do the job either if the correct legislation is not in place.

But 20M euros is a LOT of money to waste hock:

[Robert Vermaat]

Do you know that Pompeii in 2009 had 20 millions euros that was not possible to spend because the italian law didn't admin that? Do you know that for the current law Pompeii cannot hire any more people? This means also that if someone retires, it cannot be substituted...!
Incredible eh?.

As to a), does that mean that they still have the €20M?
As to b), it's exactly the same where I work (Dutch local government). So no, I believe it. It's called budget cuts.

[Luca]

I don't know really if those 20 Millions were spent in 2010, but I remember something that those money were used for the "national emergency" to destroy and rebuild the Pompeii Theater.

[Epictetus]

The Wall Street Journal has a good article: While Pompeii Crumbles.

They stress the importance of private sources of funds in the future. This was rather sobering:

A continuing study by the preservationist group Our Italy has already identified more than 80 major monuments and archaeological sites nationwide at grave risk of collapse, including Bologna's two great medieval towers, the ancient Aurelian walls around Rome, and Capua's Roman amphitheater, second in size only to the Colosseum.

[Epictetus]

Again?

Pompeii collapse renews outrage over site's condition

A labour union on Thursday reported that a chunk of the wall from Domus of Diomede building on Via Consolare collapsed a day after European Commissioner Johannes Hahn announced that the European Union would give up to 105 million euros to protect and restore the fragile site UNESCO World Heritage site that was buried by volcanic ash around two thousand years ago.

The funds are part of one billion euros earmarked for cultural heritage projects, with particular emphasis on southern Italy, according to Italian minister for regional affairs Raffaele Fitto.

An similar collapse last week prompted Italian culture minister Giancarlo Galan to promise that he would make Pompeii his "the utmost priorty.''

He made almost identical remarks in March shortly after the state of Pompeii led to his predecessor's resignation.

"Enough already," said opposition politician Vittoria Franco, a member the Italian Senate's culture commission. "What is the Culture Ministry waiting for? For one of the world's most important archeological sites to disappear?"

But Mary Beard says to calm down.

By chance I am on the site of Pompeii for the weekend. It is now swarming with more journalists than tourists, and all (it seems) with a determination to hype another collapse, another Pompeian disaster. That is to say, they are here with a determined misunderstanding of what has just happened -- or with a drive to use any damage to the site as a stick with which to beat Berlusconi...

So far as I can tell, what happened is this. There was an absolute downpour last night, in the course of which some stones were dislodged from a relatively fragile (and not very well built) stretch of wall near the Nola gate. A custode entered this damage rather loosely in the incident book -- and (we can only speculate how and why) that report got to the press, and it soon became a new "wall collapse". The carabinieri arrived and everything in the area (including, let me confess, where I want to go) was shut off.

I've had a look around so far as I can, and asked a good few questions ... and I don't think that it was any such thing as a 'collapse'. Sure, some blocks were shifted in a torrential storm; but it really wasn't the destruction of a priceless masterpiece.

[Vindex]

Thank you for the more balanced addition to the reporting!