Today marks the end of the successful "Grande Progetto Pompei", a major project to restore the Pompeii archaeological site, a global tourist attraction, cultural landmark, and a driver for the local economy. The project lasted 10 years and received more than €78 million from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
Thanks to a total funding of €105 million, including the €78 million from the ERDF, 70 buildings have been restored. Thanks to the project, more than 40 hectares of the site can be visited, and the site is now accessible to people with reduced mobility, with a dedicated itinerary of more than 4km. Buildings are now secured against disruptive weather events, which led to past collapses.
Around 30,000 tonnes of material (stone, ash, and ground) were removed and almost 1,200 items and 170 packages of new objects and fragments of plaster have been unearthed.
The project led to a remarkable surge of the number of visitors, up from 2.3 million in 2012 to over 4 million in 2019. This project also illustrates how culture can contribute to economic development. Compared to 2013 there has been an increase of 40% of occupancy in hotels and of 20% of turnover in restaurants in the surrounding areas.
Background
Pompeii was an ancient city located near Naples in the Campania region of Italy that was buried under volcanic ash and pumice following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Largely preserved under the ash, the excavated city offers a unique snapshot of Roman life, frozen at the moment it was buried.
Pompeii is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy.
The project to restore Pompeii was approved by the Commission in 2012, following the collapses of several buildings in 2010, due to a lack of maintenance and extreme weather events. At that time, only 5 out of the 60 domus of the site were accessible to visitors. All domus have now been repaired.
The major project, consisting of 76 measures divided into 5 integrated plans, was executed in two phases: the first one under the programming period 2007-2013 with a total EU investment of €40 million, and the second phase amounted to €65 million under the period 2014-2020.
During the 2014-2020 programming period, Cohesion Policy invested more than €939 million in Italy to restore its cultural heritage, and over €4 billion in the whole EU.
