“The Park Management immediately reported the theft to the police. Checks are currently underway, using the internal video surveillance system to reconstruct the incident, which we hope will provide elements for the recovery of the find”.
He said this in a note Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, after the discovery of a theft. On Monday, in fact, the removal of a marble manhole cover of about 20 centimetres in diameter belonging to a cistern mouth in a room of the House of Sirico.
In the Sirico house, regularly open to the public, ordinary maintenance work is underway by the Park restorers. Specifically, the marble covering of the cistern mouth had been subjected to a safety intervention and metal brackets had been installed in order to guarantee better support for the manhole cover itself. The works are now underway police investigations.
We at Cronache della Campania were good prophets when we reported the news of the discovery of the mummified corpse of an ancient Pompeian, such Marcus Venerius Secundius, who was buried in a tomb that can be defined as a mortuary "chamber" near the Sarno Gate, in ancient called Gate of Isis. Without raising any other question than a banal problem, of absolute ordinariness, after having arrived as an unwelcome guest, as reporters near the tomb, outside the walls, whose safety we found entrusted to the remote surveillance of a single video camera, moreover not functioning at night.
And we wrote: “…In the meantime, today and in the future, the unsolved problem of Pompeii arises: the conservation of the excavated finds. Not only the half-mummified corpse of Marcus, which will go to some laboratory, but also the walls, plaster and frescoes of his Tomb, excavated by the Spanish in a site left over from old railway works of the Circumvesuviana, which in the twentieth century obliterated the graft of the Sarno Canal in the Oscan and pre-Roman defensive walls, altering the entire environmental context. To this day, in fact, the protection of the suddenly famous site is guaranteed only by remote video surveillance, while its enhancement is coincidentally guaranteed by the rows of vineyards of the famous Pompeian Resort Bosco de' Medici. And, thank goodness! But it's a… little, for an international model.”
We were not magicians then, nor are we far-sighted today, but we raised and raise an ordinary problem of general and nocturnal security of the site, which the major press will also return to in the coming days. From internal rumors, we understand that there have been more than a few in the past years and months serious failure of the anti-theft protection network, recently and partially renovated.
And we think that for too many years there has been a lack of ordinary management in the operational line of the Pompeii Archaeological Park, accustomed to spending millions of euros and giving resounding news reports on re-findings and rediscoveries of various types and of non-indisputable value. However, we also think that this is the time in which the new Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel will not find himself alongside the previous Director and the Minister pro tempore media space is his due.
He will learn to roll up his sleeves on his own. And to get them dirty in everyday life. There is no other recipe. Formats are best left to TV.
Thefts are back in the excavations of Pompeii where the staff of the Archaeological Park have found that unknown persons, between 30 September and 4 October, stole a circular marble manhole cover with a diameter of 20 centimetres which was located inside the Domus of Sirico in Regio VII (insula 1, number 25, room 24). See Siricus He was probably a merchant and politician of Roman Pompeii in the years surrounding the eruption of 79 AD and received his supporters in his luxurious home, welcoming them with the auspicious inscription "Hello lucru" (Welcome profit!) which could be read on the floor of the entrance hall.
From this house, currently under restoration, the cover of a white marble "manhole" has disappeared. The carabinieri began their investigations as soon as the Park management reported the theft, which is currently being checked using the internal video surveillance system to reconstruct what happened. The episode dates back to October 4th.
Sirico's house is open to the public even though ordinary maintenance work is underway. The marble covering of the cistern mouth had been subjected to a safety intervention with the installation of metal brackets to ensure better support for the manhole cover itself. It is a very large house because it is the result of the aggregation, which took place in the 1st century BC, of two houses, one with an entrance from Stabian Street, the other from the alley of LupanarAt the time of the eruption, the entire property was undergoing a radical renovation of the decorative features according to the dictates of the time.
Among the parts already completed was the exedra where the guests banqueted on triclinium beds placed around a precious marble slab floor and surrounded by refined frescoes with mythological subjects inspired by the Trojan War, one of which is exposed to the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. The identification of the last owner of the house, Publius Vedius Siricus, is due to the discovery of a bronze seal bearing that name.
The house has undergone major consolidation and restoration work, which ended in 2016 and which have returned the rooms to the visitor in all their grandeur. Further restoration work has led the experts to focus on the area of theimpluvium in the atrium of the domus. The impluvium is the basin that collects rainwater and night condensation, water conveyed into a cistern below, on which there was the stolen manhole cover.
It was the custodians, during their periodic reconnaissance rounds, who noticed the absence of the circular marble that everyone is now wondering who could be interested in, as it lacks any friezes that would characterize it and, moreover, is very difficult to remove from its location. Questions that will be answered by the investigators who occasionally find themselves chasing thieves of objects of archaeological value stolen from the Ruins of Pompeii. And who knows, maybe as has happened on other occasions, the thieves themselves will return the small find, perhaps convinced by superstition and fear that objects stolen from the victims of the eruption could bring misfortune to those who stole them.
Federico LI Federico
EDITORIAL TEAM
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