Massimo Osanna: we sell Pompeii's lapilli as gadgets to tourists: it's valorization

Selling Pompeii’s lapilli as gadgets to tourists: this is not a boutade, but an idea of Massimo Osanna, former director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park and now director general of Italian museums. He said this during a lecture Osanna gave Wednesday for the opening of the academic year of the School of Specialization in Architectural and Landscape Heritage at the Federico II University of Naples.

“My new challenge,” Osanna said, “is to bring Pompeian best practices to all Italian museums and archaeological sites, with planned maintenance projects extended to every site.” And among the ideas that Osanna said could be viable is the sale of Vesuvius’ lapilli to tourists: he said this at the end of his speech, responding to a question about possible future projects to enhance the material in the deposits.

In the deposits, Osanna said, “there are quintals and quintals of lapilli, which are now accumulated in the unexcavated area. I would like (I haven’t succeeded yet) to do a valorization project with them: I would like to sell them, as gadgets. Little bottles with lapilli in them and sell them. I haven’t succeeded because I haven’t had the material time to devote to it, because it’s quite a complex problem, so much so that at one point there was even an episode where we were supposed to take these lapilli to Bulgaria where there was the set for our film that was being made, but with the officials we got stuck because we thought they would block them at customs. We therefore desisted.” The lapilli, Osanna continued, “used to be left to companies, which I think also made some profit from it, because it is important material for construction, instead it would be nice to enhance it in this way as well.”

Pictured: Massimo Osanna

Massimo Osanna: we sell Pompeii's lapilli as gadgets to tourists: it's valorization

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