Pompeii Burying Itself This Time Around Destructive Mount Vesuvius Takes Back Seat To Thieves, Weather, Pollution, Neglect, Wild Dogs

Pompeii is a city under siege, a city at risk of dying. Again.

The ancient Roman town in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius has long been synonymous with tragedy. A powerful earthquake struck in A.D. 62. Sixteen years later, just as Pompeii was recovering, Vesuvius blew its top, burying the bustling city and killing thousands of people.

Time transformed disaster into another era’s good fortune. A 20-foot-deep cocoon of volcanic ash preserved the city virtually intact, bestowing an unparalleled gift for future generations: intimate knowledge of day-to-day life in the ancient world.

For 200 years, treasure hunters and archaeologists have been digging up Pompeii. It has yielded charred loaves of bread and house keys, brilliant wall frescoes and marble and bronze statues. Even graffiti survived. “You’re my Venus,” one amorous fellow wrote.

Pompeii is an unrivaled time machine that takes us back 2,000 years.

But the machine is breaking down. A ruthless array of forces - mobsters, mismanagement, weather, weeds, tourists, thieves, pollution, neglect and corruption - have taken a toll. And what is lost cannot be recovered.

“Pompeii’s death is not in one blow. It is slow, but sure,” says Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the archaeological superintendent of ancient Pompeii, which is a nationally administered district separate from the nearby modern town of Pompeii.

Wild dogs roam the ancient city, snapping and snarling at tourists. Weeds dislodge paving stones and mosaics. Sun and rain fade frescoes - some are now almost invisible, others gone for good. Rotting boards prop up crumbling walls and barricades block off much of the city.

Most of the wall paintings, the colonnaded houses, the statues and mosaics are now off-limits. Only 34 acres are open - half of what visitors could see in the 1950s.

Many of Pompeii’s treasures are not even at Pompeii anymore. They are in a national museum in Naples, 15 miles away. Pompeii’s own museum, the Antiquarium, was closed after thieves looted it of coins and jewelry in 1975.

Two years later, someone hacked 14 frescoes out of the House of the Gladiators. Nearly 600 more items were stolen from Pompeii over the next 15 years.

Pompeii attracts tourists in ever-increasing numbers. Around 2 million people now visit every year. They jam into the few open houses, backpacks scraping against frescoes, fingers rubbing along painted walls, greedy hands scooping up morsels of marble as souvenirs.