Appointment countersigned by the Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta, the Pompeii Archaeological Park has a new director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, now an Italian citizen. Forty years in June, at the helm of the Paestum-Velia Archaeological Park since 2015, Zuchtriegel succeeds Massimo Osanna, seven years at the helm of the Pompeii excavations and now general director of the Museums of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
The new director can get to work immediately and put his priorities into practice: protect excavations with the help of innovative technologies, continue the maintenance work started by its predecessor, make domus and gardens easily accessible to all, redevelop the external area with the Buffer Zone. This is the territory made up of nine municipalities adjacent to the Archaeological Park (Pompeii, Herculaneum, Boscoreale, Boscotrecase, Castellammare di Stabia, Torre Annunziata, Torre del Greco, Portici and Trecase), an area that falls within the territories deemed by Unesco worthy of protection because it hosts the heritage sites of humanity. The objective is the enhancement of historical and cultural resources through the establishment of an integrated and sustainable tourism system for better accessibility to the places of historical and cultural interest in the area.
But Zuchtriegel will work above all on the preventive protection of the territory. It will do so with the use of new technologies, from drones to sensors (already tested in Paestum), to satellites. “Objective – he affirms – to keep hydrogeological instability and the safety of the area under control”.
The archaeologist was – and will still be this year – among the protagonists of the Mediterranean exchange of archaeological tourism of Paestum going to enhance the Unesco site since 1998, which is why the unique event in the world of its kind was born.