A Green Ring for the ancient city of Pompeii
Award of Excellence
Analysis and Planning
Pompei, Naples, Italy
Studio Bellesi Giuntoli
Client: PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO DI POMPEI - Ministero della Cultura
A sensitive and interesting approach on how to protect and regulate a heritage site through landscape design.
- 2024 Awards Jury
Project Credits
Paolo Mighetto, Manager for Archeological Park of Pompeii
Alessandro Marradi, Engineering Consulting
Alberto Giuntoli, PhD. International ASLA, Landscape and Planning
Lorenzo Pacini, Landscape and Planning
Silvia Bellesi, Landscape and Planning
Lorenzo Casulli, Designer
Fabio Villasanta, Landscape and Planning
Martina Simeone, Landscape and Planning
Milena Meniconi, Agronomist
Giovanni Minucci, Social Consulting
Project Statement
A green ring of 4 km, surrounding the walls of ancient Pompeii, is planned as a buffer park where necropolises and extra urban Roman villas coexist with agriculture and forests. The park will highlight the site’s historical character while enhancing the quality of the visit, creating inclusive pathways and resting places for the 4 M tourist who visit yearly and for the residents. The Ring, with its new functional areas, will become the main spine of the connection network between the archaeological site and the territory. New view points will connect the ancient city with the landscape of Vesuvius and of the Gulf of Naples while the ecological corridors of the surrounding ecosystems will be integrated in the new green infrastructure.
Project Narrative
The archaeological site of Pompeii, a UNESCO WHS since 1997, owes its sad reputation to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that buried the wealthy Roman city with lava and ash, along with Stabiae, Oplontis and Herculaneum. This catastrophe made it possible that Pompeii, after about two thousand years, was found almost intact becoming priceless historical evidence of the culture and daily life habits of the time.
Excavation of Pompeii began in the mid 18th century, but just a century later, Giuseppe Fiorelli inspector of the excavations, clarified that the buried city was not just made up of streets and domus, but also of rich gardens. The extensive archaeo-botanical studies, as well as the botanical interpretation of the many plant-themed frescoes of the domus, done by various scientists in the past, have been inestimable documentation for our project. The American archaeologist Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski, in 1979, contributed significantly to the historical knowledge of Pompeiis flora, with her volume "The Gardens of Pompeii". Another fundamental figure for the knowledge of the ancient landscape was the biologist and, in the 1980s, manager of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage Annamaria Ciarallo. She wrote the Flora Pompeiana, listing over 200 plant species existing in ancient Roman time and designed, at the end of the 1990s, a pedestrian circuit outside the walls of great landscape value, which was gradually forgotten.
The project site is located in the municipality of Pompeii, in the province of Naples and is surrounded by many infrastructures: the Naples-Pompeii-Salerno highway, the Naples-Salerno railway and the two lines of the Circumvesuviana railway. The site, located in the plain of the Sarno river, within the territorial system of the Vesuvian coast, is characterized by historical, landscape and environmental singularities of great value. The "Somma-Vesuvius" mountain system is located in the “Vesuvius National Park” and is characterized by the current volcano, the Vesuvius, and the Monte Somma, the remains of the ancient volcano after the eruption.
The project for the Green Ring was promoted by the Ministry of Culture (MIC) and by the Pompeii Archaeological Park and was co-financed by MIC through the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience of the Next Generation EU program.
The new buffer park, which integrates the design of Ciarallo’s pathway, will stimulate the inhabitants of the municipality to actively experience the amazing beauty and quietness of this unique place, walking or relaxing in the new green park. The Ring will also redistribute the considerable flows of visitors mitigating the pressure on the site thus helping with the protection of the archaeological remains. There will therefore be two connected circuits, one inside and one outside the historic walls, the last freely open to residents. Iconic plants (e.g. Pinus pinea) and materials (e.g. tuff) will be reused to represent the remains of the overlapped layers of historical landscape, like a palimpsest, while other species (e.g. Cupressuss sempervirens) from the ancient landscape will be reintroduced as landmarks.
The park will connect existing and new green areas, create new public spaces as playgrounds and rest areas, and it will pass through the necropolises outside the walls. It will offer remarkable views of the archaeological remains, the Vesuvius, the bay, the rural and the “wild” areas.