Feb. 5 – “I love Pompeii more than Paris,” famously said the American author Herman Melville. And Marseille probably agrees, given the sport rivalry with the French capital. The thriving city of the Roman Empire, founded in the sixth century BCE, completely destroyed by the terrible eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, is now at the center of a series of initiatives promoted by the Italian Cultural Institute in Marseille, by director Roberta Alberotanza. The first meeting, scheduled at 6pm on Tuesday, February 10, will star Maria Teresa Caracciolo, historian, researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, a specialist of European paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries and of Italian-French relations during the French Revolution and the Empire. The historian will talk about “Pompeii and Europe (1748-1943),” anticipating the content of an exhibition, curated by Caracciolo, on display at the Archaeological Museum of Naples starting from the end of May. Caracciolo will give a fascinating account of the vicissitudes experienced by Pompeii, after the discovery of the site in 1738. Pompeii, like the Phoenix, was able to rise from its ashes, and from oblivion. The conference will be an opportunity to learn about Pompeii, a great city that archaeologists unearthed slowly, a city of the imagination, that brought artists, writers and musicians to dream and fantasize about it. At 7:30pm, there will be the inauguration of the exhibition “The Denied Imaginary of the Vettii Villa in Pompeii,” curated by archaeologist Laura Del Verme, honorary inspector for Archaeological Heritage, who will attend the opening event, and by archaeologist Marcella Cozzolino.
