The Pompeii excavations are moving towards new, stabilized conditions.
In fact, on March 31st Massimo Osanna, who has already taken up residence in Rome, will actually be a former Director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, while Gabriel Zuchtriegel will be the new Director from the following day. And obviously he will have to deal with what the English call the evryday life, that is, the daily problems of the Pompeian Excavations and their annexes and connections, including the formalities of the closure of the Great Pompeii Project. And he will have to take into account the portions of territory forcefully inserted into the Master Plan of the UNESCO Buffer Zone, chosen together to respond to the various local political appetites, with the decisive consent/assent of the Roman Palaces.
New President of the International Association of Friends of Pompeii elected
In the meantime, the new President of the International Association of Friends of Pompeii was elected towards the middle of this crazy March. Its board of directors, meeting remotely on a pre-arranged audio-video platform - therefore in full compliance with the anti-Covid regulations - after having taken note of the resignation of President Stefano De Caro, a Pompeian archaeologist of great value and former Director of ICCROM known in Italy and abroad, elected Antonio Varone, a Pompeian archaeologist and epigrapher renowned at a national level, as president.
What the two archaeologists have in common – in addition to their age, since Varone is only slightly younger than De Caro – is above all the fact that they were both officials of the then BBCC Ministry and that they both directed the excavations at Pompeii for several years.
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Furthermore, they have strong roots in our region, both currently living on the outskirts of Salerno, from where they often and willingly travel to Pompeii.
In short, these are two former officials of the Pompeii excavations who never severed contact with Pompeii and the Vesuvian area, despite having worked in Rome for several years.
And both have always maintained excellent relations with the Association and its Secretary, the esteemed Vesuvian historian Angelandrea Casale, who today represents the continuity of the association, after the recent death of its treasurer, the Pompeian.doc Vincenzo Sicignano.
Without dwelling further on the causes that pushed Prof. De Caro to resign, which were addressed to the no longer acceptable operating methods of Roman and Roma-centric Politics and, moreover, motivated by De Caro himself with great clarity, we intend to focus in this article on the Association.
We do this both because of the change at the top and to give the reader an understanding of the problems connected to this organization that until now has generally been little talked about. We enter in medias res therefore, to report that the founder of the Association was Amedeo Maiuri, unanimously recognized as the most illustrious Pompeianist of the twentieth century.
Maiuri directed the Archaeological Superintendency of Pompeii for 37 years, starting in the 1961s and until 1960, when he retired, after having welcomed the Torchbearer of the Rome Olympics torch to Pompeii the year before, in XNUMX, with one of his famous speeches. Maiuri, in addition to being a great orator, was a great writer and popularizer of the Myth of Pompeii throughout the world.
He went through the vicissitudes of the Second World War, during which he was also wounded in an Allied air raid, while he was going to work in Naples, coming from his beloved Pompeii.
And it is thanks to him, to his closest collaborators and to the timely work of recovering the damaged finds, that the huge destruction caused by the more than one hundred aerial bombs, which rained down indiscriminately on Pompeii in those years, was partly limited and partly recovered with careful restoration work on site.
According to the Statute, the Association – open to foreign Universities and Cultural Institutes – organizes conventions and conferences, establishes scholarships, competitions and archaeological research activities for young people. It also publishes a specialized magazine that today is distributed under the name of “Rivista di Studi Pompeiani”.
The historical headquarters of the Association is in Pompeii, in the State-owned area of the Excavations, at the Pompeian Auditorium. At this point, we limit ourselves to wishing Antonio Varone good luck in his work and to sincerely hoping that the new Director of the Pompeii park, Gabriel Zuchtriegel – who, according to the Statute, will also be a Member by right of the Scientific Committee of the Association – will be able to appreciate its autonomous action and respect its identity, rarely lost in its almost seventy years of association life.
Federico LI Federico
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