\n <\/p>\n
\u201cIn this photo, I\u2019m in the banquet hall of the House of Thiasus, a space that was frozen mid-renovation by the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in ad<\/span> 79.<\/p>\n The space shows the beauty of Roman design: the floor mosaics give way to columns, and frescoes of dancers, fish and laden tables still adorn the walls. Most arresting of all is the deep cinnabar-red pigment that\u2019s used in some of the frescoes: it is rare, unstable and made with mercury sulfide. Too much light or moisture could be enough to darken the paint to black. My job is to ensure that doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n As an art conservator, I work alongside archaeologists, engineers, architects and fellow restorers to excavate sites here. Every dig is a race against time: objects that have rested underground for two millennia suddenly face sunlight, air and humidity.<\/p>\n When uncovering frescoes, the main challenge is controlling those factors, especially how the stone dries: it must do so slowly, and requires careful monitoring to prevent salts, carried by moisture migrating outwards, from crystallizing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIn this photo, I\u2019m in the banquet hall of the House of Thiasus, a space that was frozen mid-renovation by the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79. The space shows the beauty of Roman design: the floor mosaics give way to columns, and frescoes of dancers, fish and laden tables still adorn the walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[18124,18123,1207,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-30994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-pompeiis","9":"tag-preserving","10":"tag-step","11":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}