Displaying items by tag: pompeii

The house of Roman banker Lucius Caecilius Jucundus was only partially destroyed in 79 EC when Vesuvius erupted in Pompeii. Today, the house still retains some of its foundations, walls, and even details of mosaics and carved reliefs. Researchers at Sweden’s Lund University have digitally reconstructed the building using 3D technology that simulates the experience of walking through the home’s meticulously embellished interiors.

At first glance the 25 artifacts displayed in the courtyard of a former convent just off the Tiber River here on Tuesday seemed to have little in common: three first-century B.C. fresco fragments from Pompeii were exhibited alongside fifth- and sixth-century B.C. Etruscan and Attic vases, a 17th-century Venetian cannon, a 12th-century mural fragment depicting Christ and three rare 17th-century books. What they shared was a nefarious past.

This weekend marked the reopening of Pompeii's Villa of Mysteries after two years and €900,000 ($973,600) worth of careful restorations to the building's ancient frescoes and mosaics.

The villa is one of the best-preserved homes in Pompeii, which was buried in the ashes of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, and remained lost until its excavation in 1748. The Villa of Mysteries is best-known for its brightly-colored red and orange paintings of life-size figures, believed to depict the initiation rights of the cult of Dionysus, the wine god.

A pair of American tourists were pinched by Italian police when Fiumicino airport authorities in Rome discovered a stolen Pompeii relic in their luggage, reports the Local. The remarkably ill-advised crime rivals our favorite Italian art news story of the year, “Italian Student Smashes Sculpture While Taking Selfie” in its general stupidity.

The massive artifact, which was removed from a building at the historic site, weighed more than 65 pounds, but that wasn’t about to stop the thieves from smuggling it on board an aircraft and back to the States.

Last week, it was discovered that part of a fresco was missing from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. It is believed that thieves broke into a closed-off section of the UNESCO World Heritage site and chiseled off a portion of the fresco bearing a depiction of the Greek goddess Artemis.

Police have launched an investigation into the disappearance of the eight-inch wide fragment. They will be reviewing surveillance footage from the perimeter of the site in hopes of identifying the thieves, but there are no security cameras within the ruins.

Professor Umberto Pappalardo, an archaeological expert at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples, told AFP he believes petty criminals were behind the theft, rather than art thieves aiming to sell the fragment on the international market. Pappalardo added, “Selling a stolen fresco from a site as well documented as Pompeii would be a very, very tall order. There would certainly not be any market for it in Italy.”    

In January, a fragment of fresco was taken from another part of Pompeii and sent to the curator’s office in an anonymous package. Pompeii, one of Italy's main tourist attractions, has become a symbol for decades of mismanagement of the country's cultural sites. Italy's new Culture Minister, Dario Franceschini, has promised to increase maintenance work at Pompeii.