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A collapsed wall from the Porta Nocera doorway in Pompeii yesterday. Image: Salvatore La Porta/AP/PA Images.
THE TEMPLE OF Venus and walls of a tomb and shop in the long-neglected ruins of Pompeii near Naples have been damaged, possibly due to heavy rain, officials said today.
Custodians found that a two-metre wall of an ancient shop in the ruined city – which had recently been restored – had collapsed under the weight of another wall that crumbled onto it.
It followed the discovery yesterday that parts of an archway in the temple had fallen off and a wall in the necropolis – the biggest in the ancient Roman city – had tumbled down.
The areas affected have been closed the public.
Italian Culture Minister Dario Franceschini has called a meeting this week to assess the damage and progress made in an EU-backed project to restore the archaeological site.
“The news of these collapses comes at a time in which there is an unprecedented vacuum in the management of Pompeii,” said Antonio Irlando from the Cultural Heritage Observatory, a non-governmental group that follows work on Pompeii.
“For every collapse that is reported, there are another nine that do not make news,” he said, calling the state of the ancient site “dramatic”.
The Temple of Venus, already being held up by some scaffolding, suffered damage too. Image: Salvatore La Porta/AP/PA Images.
Conservation workers last year began a €105 million makeover of the UNESCO World Heritage landmark, funded by the European Union to the tune of €41.8 million.
Officials last month reported the completion of the first project under the plan – the restoration of the frescoed House of the Cryptoporticus – but the project has been badly delayed by bureaucracy.
The project is seen as crucial to the survival of Pompeii after a series of collapses at the 44-hectare site in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius – the volcano that destroyed the city in 79 AD.
Sleep walking into a firmly controlled disaster!
@Colette Kearns: those newbies oblivious to whats coming!
Cash is still king folks keep using it as much as possible
A cashless society is a dark road to totalitarian control. They will know where you spend your money and how you spend your money. If your political ideology does not align with theirs they simply freeze you out of the system just like Canada did. Infactvits already happened here
@GreenFlag: not really about control. But the sane person who n
@GreenFlag: not really about control. But the same person who makes your argument will go shopping in Tesco with their club card (shoes Tesco everything you buy and how often you buy and your demographic breakdown) as well as accepting cookies on websites and allowing meta to look
At you personal info. But it’s the paying with card which is the bad thing .. clearly ..
@Ciaran: Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is coming; plans are well advanced in the US,UK, EU and elsewhere. These currencies will be programmable, i.e. where, when and on what you spend ‘your’ money will be monitored and controlled. This is not the same as voluntarily sharing meta data with some social media platform.
Research CBDCs and understand a cashless society is not good for the ordinary citizen.
@GreenFlag: why do you even have a phone then?
Hardly surprising as contactless is easier and safer for those paying, plus merchants don’t have the costs and security concerns of handling cash.
@Stephen Kearon: More like merchants have to declare all transactions.
Should this article not be marked as “Sponsored By BOI or AIB” ?…….Cash is KING.
@Eddie Feeney:
They could at least sponsor the stock image
@Sandra Anderson: and that’s a bad thing?
Cashless is the way to go. Get rid of the blackmarket and the brown envelopes.
And what do you propose in its place? One thing is for sure, the only market losing out on this is the black market
Of course. That is what the educational system, (run by mercenary merchants have told them to do), is anyone surprised? I know I am not. I’ve been warned about this sort of thing by the conspiracy theorists. Ha ha ha. How about using all those critical faculties you were told you had, when you started at university. Pity you seem to have lost them on the way out and gained a loan that you are unlikely to be ever able to pay back. You are now a criminal in one country if not another. Welcome to the new world renowned among us, by us, and don’t bother to ask for justice. You should know by now you are not going to get it on the journal. When all hope is lost. That’s when you will have a chance to chat with the most high. Ain’t that good news?
I love cash and will only use cash
Happy to use the card cept for the bank fees.
@der Fussballmeister: What bank fees are you referring to? Contactless payments are free (/included with your account servicing fees) with all retail banks in Ireland. ATM withdrawals are not.
The only reason I dont fully go cashless, and even more so, contactless, is that it is too handy. So handy in fact that people can forget and just keep tapping. Call me old fashioned, but I continue to take my weekly cash out so I can see exactly where it goes and how much I have left for the rest of the week. It has nothing to do about worrying about the New World Orders or that the banks and shops and government knowing what I spend my money on…..just me, myself, keeping control of where it goes.
I buy all my tinfoil hats with cash. Can’t beat it.
Heading for cashless
have your say