La Stampa<\/em> newspaper ran a story headlined “Pompeii — the collapse of shame,” echoing national opinion over the cultural disaster.<\/p>\nThe stone house, on one of the site’s main streets and measuring about 80 sq m (860 sq ft), collapsed just after dawn yesterday while Pompeii was closed to visitors. The structure was believed to have been used as a club house by gladiators before they went to battle in a nearby amphitheatre.<\/p>\n
[. . .]<\/p>\n
“Precisely because it belongs to all humanity, its management should be taken away from a state that has shown itself incapable of protecting it,” <\/p>\n
[. . .]<\/p>\n
Approximately 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii every year, making it one of Italy’s most popular attractions. Art historians and residents have for years complained that the sites were in a state of decay and needed regular maintenance. Two years ago the government declared a state of emergency for Pompeii but it lasted only a year.<\/p>\n
Roberto Cecchi, under-secretary at the culture ministry, said there had been no effective, continuous maintenance at Pompeii in half a century. Breaking ranks with his ministry, he said stop-gap, ad hoc measures, such as the appointment of commissioners, which attracted flashes of publicity, were no substitute for the constant monitoring worthy of a world treasure.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
To be fair, the Guardian<\/em> is merely reporting on the calls for privatization, not explicitly endorsing them, but even that is shocking enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I never thought I’d read an article in the Guardian calling for the privatization of a state asset: Opposition politicians and commentators accused Italy’s government of neglect and mismanagement today over the collapse of the 2,000-year-old House of the Gladiators in the ruins of ancient Pompeii. Some commentators said the Unesco world heritage site should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,25,62,7,339],"tags":[288,1455,394],"class_list":["post-6293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-economics","category-europe","category-history","category-italy","tag-archaeology","tag-pompeii","tag-privatization"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1Dv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6293"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71560,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions\/71560"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}