Pompeii. The Enchanted City

Every day, Gabriel Zuchtriegel strolls the alleys of the ancient city of Pompeii, destroyed and buried alive in less than two days in 79 AD. Site inspections, excavations, restoration projects, and accessibility projects bring him face to face with the fragility of a unique site, the beauty of ancient art, and the transience of human life. Standing before the casts of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption, as well as the sculpture of a sleeping fisherman boy who reminds him of his son, he asks himself: "What does Pompeii have to do with us? What does the ancient world have to tell us today?" Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park, leads readers on a journey through the centuries in an enchanted city, where past and present magically blend. A journey of discoveries, from the first excavations in the eighteenth century to the most recent finds, which shed new light on the lives of slaves and the poor in the city and its surroundings. The author traces the history of modern archaeology, intrinsically linked to that of Pompeii. Initially, it focused almost exclusively on the artworks excavated from the ground, only to gradually discover that the true treasure bequeathed to us from the ashes of Vesuvius encompasses much more: ancient rituals, mystery cults, transgressions and eroticism, the social and cultural history of a civilization, its obsessions and hopes. These themes are closely intertwined with our present and with our individual biography, as Zuchtriegel demonstrates by also discussing his personal and professional experiences, not omitting the doubts and difficulties encountered during a journey that took him from a small town in southern Germany to the most famous archaeological site in the world.

• Publication date: November 2023
• Dimensions: 14 x 2.7 x 22 cm
• Pages: 192
• Language: Italian