L'Herculaneum Conservation Project: un programma di conservazione per salvare la città antica

The present article illustrates the new program for the conservation of the city of Herculaneum carried out by the SAP (Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei), the British School at Rome and the Packard Humanities Institute, the latter of which also financed the program. A specific sponsoring contract, made possible by recent legislative measures, allows the British School to carry out, under its own care and expense, preservation, restoration and exploitation works, under the control and with the permission of the SAP. The British School will also be permitted to contract out work to firms which meet the requirements of the Italian law. Important restoration works, which have considerably raised the mean preservation level of the archaeological park, will thus be carried out with great speed and efficiency. Among the many advantages of the sponsoring contract there is also the capacity to connect all the preservation and maintenance activities with those of a more strictly scientiic nature, aimed at increasing the general knowledge of the site, and also considered as the indispensable means by which technical operative decisions can be made. The constant exchange of information and the mutual sustenance between different competences of single specialists constituting the HCP team represent the true strong point of the entire project.