Well, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the archaeological park of Paestum, where are we? We're inside the archaeological area in front of the temple of Neptune, the so-called Temple of Neptune, and you see also the so-called basilica, which is another Greek temple, 6th century BC. Constructed by the Greek settlers who came here around 600 BC, and it's really one of the very few sites in the Mediterranean where you can still see these ancient monuments standing there, almost as they were 2,500 years ago. So it's a place of great importance for archaeology, but also for art history and modern European culture, because people came here to study these monuments, architects, writers, artists. At that time it was very difficult to travel to Greece and Turkey and other areas, so Paestum was really the really place where Europe was, kind of, discovering its own origins. So this place, since 1998, has been part of the list of the World Heritage. This means that there are a lot of people that are coming here to see and to visit it. Can you give us some figures about the number of people here, and what are the challenges of managing this archaeological park? We had, last year, in 2015, more than 300,000 visitors a year. It's in the first few months of the year 2016, it's increasing, so we are getting even more visitors. This year, it's a huge area. So if you think of Pompeii where you have almost three million people, we still have much space. We don't have the same kind of problems with too much people. So it's really not a problem at the moment, the numbers. What we have to look at very carefully is where people actually go, and how they move inside the area. On the one hand, this is clearly a security and safety problem. But it's also an issue for the conservation of the monuments. We are now standing in front of the temple of Neptune, and you see people going inside. This is something that has only been possible since a couple of days ago. The temples used to be closed to the public, you could look at them from the outside, but you couldn't go inside for the last 20 years. And we now took the risk to open them again. We have our staff inside, watching and controlling that nothing happens, and so it's a very interesting and challenging experience, because this is something where we have not so much experience. So we just started with tests, we opened, for a weekend or so, the temple, and looked at how people behaved and how they moved in initially. Up to now, it's working very well. Well, the visitors, these 100,000 visitors, what kind of visitors are they? We are in archaeological park, there is a matter of communicating the importance of the heritage and at the same time make, for the people that are novices, the possibility to understand more what the archaeology means, and for the people that have background in terms of knowledge of history and archaeology going in depth. Do you provide different sorts of visits for the different kind of targets or is it something that is unique for everybody? We don't have a single tour, which we propose to everybody. So if people ask me, how much does it take to visit the site? I always say, I don't know, because you can do it in 40 minutes and just look quickly at the three temples, but you can also spend a whole day in the area and still discover new things; because we do not only have the Greek temples, we also have an entire city with a Roman forum, with an amphitheater, with private living quarters and all of that. So, it's really an opportunity to see an ancient city in its whole, we have the city walls, almost five kilometers, entirely preserved. So, all this together, you can easily spend a few days here. And then, we have the museum, of course, which then explains the site. And what we're trying to do is be flexible. So we have panels here, where you can get information on the various monuments. We have audio guides that people can take at the ticket office, but it's basically that every visitor can create her or his own tour. And we'll try to even make this more articulated in the future. So in order to convey this possibility of a sort of customized, in a way, visit, the importance of the museum is quite relevant because we are in the archaeological park, and we have the museum in the other part of the street. So the visit in a way is interconnected, the two parts of the places are interconnected. So, for the museum, is it going to be seen before the visit or after the visit at the moment? Well this too is a decision which we don't now make for the visitors. Most people go first to the site and then to the museum. But only a rather small part of those who visit the site actually go to the museum. So there's a big difference in numbers between those who see the temples and those who then go in depth and see all the materials and the artwork in the museum, which is partly because not everybody wants to spend a whole day or a few hours here. Some really only want to come here and say, I've been to the temples of Paestum. But in part I think it's also our own fault. We actually are now trying to reinforce the link between the site and the museum. If people come to the museum, they should find other part of the story that goes on. You get one part on the site, and then you can go on to the museum. So in this archaeological park, what can a director who is an archaeologist do? So on one side you need to convey the value to the visitors, communicate, work on storytelling, reorganize the museum, on the other side, there's the importance of the research in heritage. What can be done here in terms of studies and excavations? I personally believe that it really all belongs together, you can't separate it. I wouldn't say that you have to be an archaeologist necessarily, but you have to have a connection, and maybe even a passion for research, and actually the content of what you're communicating. You can't communicate something which you have not experienced and understood yourself. I don't believe in the idea of these figure, professional profiles that focus exclusively on communication, because in my experience, it doesn't work; because, if you don't know what to say, it's really difficult and actually impossible to think about how to say it. Of course, you can also come from a different background. But you really have to immerge yourself in the archaeology and in the history of this site to communicate it. One example is, just yesterday we had a theater on the site. We used part of the forum area, where there's a pool which was used for ritual activities in antiquity. And a very interesting story, because it was for women who then brought probably a statue there and made this ritual bath. Men were not allowed to participate in all that, so really an interesting aspect of ancient religion and ritual, but of course nobody understands it looking just at the monument that you see. It's basically a big hole in the ground, so people didn't really pay attention to that to that location, to that place. But with that background, it has become a fantastic location for theater and also other didactic activities of the museum. Because people, when they know what they're looking at, they can appreciate it. Now, we are in the part of this project of a new visitor experience. Can you describe it? We're still working on it, as you see here will be a pathway leading upwards without architectural barriers. This will be covered with green grass so it will merge with the area around the temple. Then we have here this rampart, which is completely removable, so you can just come here in five minutes, four men, and lift it and take it away. So it's all very a light very experimential. We have no previous experience of how this kind of monument can be made accessible. So it was really a new thing, and we worked on it together with the Antiquities Department of Campagna. We thought and discussed a lot of how to do this. This is the result, which will open in a few days, and we'll see how it works. So, we are now entering the experiment, we're now approaching this new project that you developed. You're actually one of the first who has this privilege, if I may say so, because we're still working on it. And it's really something new, as I said, being inside, being able to move around the porticos of the temple, and having this unique vision of the other temple and of the landscape. We'll now have to see how people react to them. We are really very liberal, people can take photographs and share it on Facebook and wherever, of the site, and selfies, and whatever you want. For me, personally, it's a very special thing. It makes me think of some interesting texts that have been written about the Greek temple, so it's also linked to some kind of research. If we think of Martin Heidegger, when he writes about the temple that structures the landscape around it, and standing here and looking to the outside, it becomes one thing, the monument, and the landscape, nature, and culture. And you can feel it, standing here.
