Appointing Pompeii’s Director

‘To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden – to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry. One remembers the glow as a constant, the city as a succession of bright distances…’

Elizabeth Bowen, A Time in Rome, 1960, p.143

I was celebrating the coming Christmas holiday in my favourite Sardinian osteria when my mobile phone rang. The chatter around me was loud, so I found it hard to hear an acquaintance over the static enquire if I might serve on a (government) museum committee. Rather than quiz him, given the circumstances, I said ‘yes’. In 30 seconds, the matter was closed. Without realising it, I had committed myself to 11 days on an Italian Ministry of Culture museum selection commission.

Ten days later, the formal email came, as the national gazette reported the appointment of the commission to select directors for Pompeii, the Reggia at Caserta (a Bourbon palace that was Allied headquarters for the Mediterranean theatre from 1944 to 1945), and the Accademia in Venice, a small gallery with amazing collections that, bizarrely, attracts few visitors. I should have recognised the problem when I looked closer: we were five academics in total, and I was listed as Professor Arch[itect] Odges. ‘H’ is always a problem in Italy. But how on earth did I become an architect? It was my first insight into a Wonderland that my non-academic friends took to be a great honour, and induced funereal commiserations from those in the know.

Updating the past

Every nation does things differently. It is a terrible mistake if you live in another country believing it should be a cookie-cutter version of your own. Before long, you have to go with the flow, chip away at the things that can be changed, and accept the underlying philosophy, otherwise you’ll suffer terribly. Italy is a glorious country; it has a wonderful culture. It is a supreme privilege to live here, but boy, does the state need to come to terms with the 21st century – especially in the cultural heritage sector, where it is missing a trick.

Basically, that is the point of our committee.

The previous government had a thoughtful Minister of Culture and, in 2015, he put through a reform to create autonomous archaeological parks and museums. Twenty were designated in the first Act, each answering to a Board as well as the Ministry’s Secretary General, rather than a cumbersome hierarchical chain that eventually reached the Ministry. Change comes hard in Italy, not least because the Minister in question controversially encouraged foreigners to apply. He wanted to up the bar on the management of these places, generating increased revenues and better services. His good intentions met with clamorous dissent, but he prevailed. It seemed, though, that his initiative would be dumped by the incoming 2018 government with its nationalist agenda. It wasn’t.

The Ministry of Culture is housed in many different palaces in Rome. Our commission was destined to meet in the Collegio Romano, close to the Pantheon. This was the upside of my odyssey into the heart of Italy’s bureaucracy. My 15-minute walk took me over the Ponte Garibaldi, as the sun forced its way over the highest ruins of the Palatine, illuminating the Tiber island. The Romans called it inter duos pontes: between the two bridges. On a footprint measuring 280m by 70m, the island was once crowded with temples, the most important being that to the healing god Asclepius. Apparently, the temple was built here because the god’s sacred snakes squirmed off a boat coming up the Tiber and swam ashore. The temple probably lies beneath the prominent church of St Bartholemew.

Parts of the two bridges, the Pons Fabricus to the left, and the Pons Cestius to the right, are Roman in date, though the latter was repaired in the 11th century. The whole effect as you stare at the turbulent waters passing either side of the island is as if this were a sleek warship advancing through the city. This was not lost on the Romans. In the late Republic, someone modelled the downstream end of the Tiber island facing the Field of Mars literally into the shape of a trireme prow. Constructed in travertine and tufa, under the prow is the head of Asclepius, his staff entwined with snakes.