Premessa/Foreward

This book contains the results of the research on Accessible Pompeii. Guidelines for the extended fruition of the archaeological site which I coordinated from July 2011 and January 2013. The study, sponsored through a national call for tender for the “Finanziamento per l’Avvio di Ricerche Originali” (FARO) (“Financing for the Launching of Original Research”) by the former Polo delle Scienze e Tecnologie dell’Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” comprising the Faculties of Engineering, Architecture and Mathematical and Physical Sciences, brought teachers and experts in various disciplines to work together with the shared objective of improving the accessibility to the archaeological site of Pompeii, presently largely denied. The studies published here are the outcome of enthusiastic research, with a common overall and methodological approach, and truly interdisciplinary. Overcoming traditional disciplinary barriers, scholars in restoration, history of architecture, design, town planning, structural engineering, materials engineering, economy of cultural wealth, as well as official archaeologists, experts in accessibility issues, etc. worked together. Each one strived to achieve a scientific goal that from the start was perceived above all as an ethically shareable challenge: to allow the greatest possible number of persons, and therefore also disabled ones, the fruition of one of the ‘mythical’ places of our collective cultural heritage.