Antonio De Simone

The ancient Campanian plain, which the ancient sources labelled as felix, and the wide bay in front of it (from Punta dell’Epitaffio to Punta della Campanella) celebrated by Cicero as the crater idle deli- catus, in antiquity were the places of preference for settling villas.
The Italic farmhouse started changing into the “otium villa” from the early second century BC and by the beginning of the first century BC is widely spread, following the expansion of the Roman Empire. This cultural phenomenon has been widely investigated from the fifteenth century AD and is still flourishing since at least three centuries, as consequence of the numerous excavations which since the mid-eighteenth century take place in Campania.
Despite the proper historical and archaeological methodolo- gies used so far, the extant scholarship still lacks a comprehensive
definition of this interesting cultural phenomenon. This contri- bution reviews the formal values and the functional aspects of the coastal villa of Campania in light of the most recent excavations and studies, namely for Villa Arianna in Stabiae, the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, and the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, in order to highlight to what degree these buildings were built with innovative architectural models. In particular, it argues that they were the result of a fusion between the Hellenistic tradition and the Roman innovation, as paralleled by the cultural revolution which was ongoing and gener- ally defined as luxuria asiatica.
Lastly, the monuments here described reveal the necessity of the ancient owners to connect their villas on top of the hills to the adjacent sea, creating in this way not only a link between coast and cultivated land, but also a rational view of the terraces which en- hanced the views over the bay.

The aim of this paper is to identify the geo-morphological development and the changes in the coastal morphology of the ancient Herculaneum, through a comparative analysis of the eigh- teenth-century cartography, literary sources and the most recent archaeological data. This exam allowed us to suppose that only during the Early Imperial period Herculaneum had lost its features related to the oppidum founded at the beginning of the 1st century BC, at the time of the Social War. It became a polichne where people especially practised seafaring and fishing activities such as a large amount of archaeological items discovered
seem to demonstrate.

In 266 years, from its discovery occurred in 1748 until today, Pompeii experienced major cultural and historical circumstances, like the transition from art history to archaeology, the WWII bombing, the first experiments in restoration. Like in a living organism, these events marked and changed the ancient city, bringing it to the complex state we witness today.
This paper offers a comprehensive picture of the architectonic restoration led by the author on roughly one fifth of Pompeii (17 city blocks) over 15 years of activity, describing the typology of problems faced, the methodology adopted for the restoration, what kind of organisation and planning was used, and how its resurgence might be useful to fix the issues that the city is experiencing in the last few years.
Among the problems, there will be described those caused to walls and roofs by the restoration techniques in use from the early 20th century to the 1970s, the current threats to the houses at the borders of the unexplored areas, and the drawbacks of the current myopic emergency “patchings” (as opposed to systematic mid-term plans).
The restoration model used by the author and here described takes each city block (i.e. not the individual house) as consistent unit to restore and applies modern materials and technologies  compatible with the ancient masonry. The examples provided include the most complex – and still perfectly preserved – buildings in Pompeii, like Casa del Giardino di Ercole, Casa del Menandro, Casa del Citarista, and the Terme Suburbane.