by Joshua Hammer
On a sweltering summer afternoon, Antonio Irlando leads me down the Via dell'Abbondanza, the main thoroughfare in first-century Pompeii. The architect and conservation activist gingerly makes his way over huge, uneven paving stones that once bore the weight of horse-drawn chariots.
We pass stone houses richly decorated with interior mosaics and frescoes, and a two-millennial-old snack bar, or Thermopolium, where workmen long ago stopped for lunchtime pick-me-ups of cheese and honey. Abruptly, we reach an orange-mesh barricade. "Vietato L'Ingresso," the sign says—entry forbidden.
Source: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/
