The ‘Grande Progetto Pompei’, a major project to restore the archaeological site of Pompeii, one of Italy’s most popular tourist attractions, came to an end on Wednesday 4 October, according to the European Commission.
The project lasted 10 years and received over €78 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), one of the EU’s cohesion policy instruments (see EUROPE 11767/22).
Thanks to total funding of €105 million (€78 million from the ERDF), 70 buildings have been restored. Over 40 hectares of the site can now be visited, and the site is accessible to people with reduced mobility.
The European Commissioner responsible for Cohesion, Elisa Ferreira, stressed that investing in cultural sites “can be a driver for local economic development and benefit the citizens of the region”. 30,000 tonnes of material (stone, ash and earth) were removed and almost 1,200 items and 170 packages of new objects and fragments of plaster were unearthed. The project led to a remarkable increase in visitor numbers, from 2.3 million in 2012 to over 4 million in 2019.
The Pompeii restoration project was approved by the Commission in 2012, after several buildings collapsed. At that time, only 5 of the 60 domus were accessible to visitors. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)