For the 90 years from the first excavation, the Pop Up events will begin in Herculaneum and the old shops will reopen.
The 16 May 2017, on the ninetieth anniversary of the beginning of the first excavation campaign by the archaeologist Amedeo Maiuri, the director of the Ercolano Archaeological Park to celebrate the event it inaugurated a series of events called "Pop-up" which will take place over a year, ie until April 2018. Pop-ups, the name taken from the windows that open on browsers, will be temporary exhibitions or itineraries designed to let the visitor know the Ercolano site with different interpretations.
The first event of the series was the re-opening to the public of the Bottega Romana del Plumbarius, a workshop in the center of ancient Herculaneum which was historically found and set up by Mauri, but dismantled for conservation reasons in the early sixties. Nothing is known about the owner of the workshop except that he was probably a very important craftsman considering the finds of objects in precious metal.
The installation aimed to draw attention to the shop: on the shelves have been placed all the tools found, including a series of original stone and lead weights that still bear the mark of their builder, and two reproductions of objects probably under repair during the eruption: a statue of Bacchus with panther and a candelabrum with four arms. The originals, for conservation reasons, are in the deposits of the archaeological site.
On the occasion of the event, University students were involved in a laser scanning laboratory of ancient artifacts to produce faithful copies to be used in various re-upholsteries.
The initiative stems from the collaboration between the Superintendency and the Packard Humanities philanthropic foundation whose union created the Herculaneum Conservation Project. We do not have a Pop up event program yet, but we will update this article as soon as we have more information.
