ROME â€" Italy on Wednesday inaugurated a project financed by the European Union to restore the ancient city of Pompeii, a day after the police arrested a former restorer on charges of paying inflated fees for restoration work and placed several others under investigation. Two years after announcing that the union would commit more than $140 million to the restoration of Pompeii, where exposure to the elements and ill-fated interventions have led to routine collapses, the union’s regional affairs commissioner, Johannes Hahn, visited the city on Wednesday with three Italian government ministers.
The plan includes financing to shore up drainage and to hire and train restorers to take care of the vast site, left behind when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It also includes measures intended to prevent the infiltration of organized crime in the awarding of contracts. On Tuesday the police arrested a former restorer, and placed uder investigation other restorers and a former special commissioner for Pompeii, saying they had overspent on public contracts and on nonessential projects in violation of the terms of the state of emergency declared by the government in 2008, Italian news media reported.
