Pompeii: A political row has broken out over a restoration project at Pompeii, which critics say has become a humiliation for Italy.
For the two million people who visit the Roman city each year, the frescoes that adorn the walls of a 2,000-year-old Roman villa are particularly popular. Or rather they were until two years ago, when the House of the Vettii closed for a restoration project that was supposed to last a year, but which grinds on, the villa encased in scaffolding and a sign outside offering no indication of when it might reopen.
Pompeii may be the best preserved Roman city in the world, thanks to the volcanic ash from nearby Mount Vesuvius, which smothered it after a catastrophic eruption in AD79, but critics say it has fallen victim to years of neglect and indifference. Exquisite frescoes are scarred with modern graffiti and weeds are growing out of painted walls.
Many of the most famous villas are padlocked, while the city's most gruesome but irresistible attractions, the plaster casts of Romans who perished in the searing hot ash from Vesuvius, are displayed in dusty glass cabinets standing on rusted metal legs.
The sense of crisis came to a head last week when a respected newspaper, Corriere della Sera, ran a front-page editorial under the headline "The humiliation of Pompeii".
"The fact is that this archaeological area, which is unique in the world, is unfortunately the symbol of all the sloppiness and inefficiencies of a country that has lost its good sense and has not managed to recover it," an editorial said.
The editorial provoked a political row, with the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, and the opposition blaming each other for Pompeii's state.
