Preserving Pompeii

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) today sent a team of experts to investigate the state of the archaeological site at Pompeii in Italy. The inspection comes after two walls crumbled at the ruins of the 2,000-year-old Roman-era World Heritage site yesterday, the fourth collapse in a month.

“The universal threat is the weather”, says Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Director of the Herculaneum conservation project near Naples.

He told Lydia O’Kane that “the penetration of water is the single gravest problem on these sites.”

He adds that, “its not just the problem of water, it’s also the problem of intense sunshine… so it’s baked for some of the year and soaked for another part of the year.” Listen to full interview with Lydia O'Kane.