Gabriel Zuchtreigel, Director of Pompeii: archaeology is the most democratic form of history

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Interview – Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director of Pompeii

BBC World Service | January 12, 2026

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Overview

In this episode of The Interview, Michael Barclay sits down with Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the dynamic and sometimes controversial director of Pompeii. They explore the unique role of archaeology in telling the stories of all levels of ancient society, the persistent threat of looting and artifact theft, the morality of contested museum collections (notably the Elgin Marbles), and the profound emotional impact of unearthing lives frozen in time by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Through candid conversation, Zuchtriegel highlights how Pompeii’s material evidence offers a truer, more democratic history than written sources alone, and what it means to preserve the site today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The “Democracy” of Archaeology vs Written History

• Material Evidence vs Elite Narratives – Pompeii reveals social strata often overlooked in texts, such as enslaved people, prostitutes, and the poor.
  • “How did enslaved people live? How did the poor live? How did their apartments and houses look? That’s something where the written sources are really, really scarce… But in Pompeii you get everything.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (02:15)
• A Complete Social Picture – The eruption preserved stables, workshops, and mansions equally, providing a cross-class view of Roman life.
• Challenging the “No Middle Class” Myth – Excavations show evidence of a dynamic, aspiring middle class.
  • “If you look at Pompeii, you can see that there is something like a middle class... houses that are big maybe, but have a lot of paintings. And you can see both the ambition to rise socially, but also the fear of declining.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (04:37)

Collector Syndrome and the Curse of Artifact Theft

• Tourist “Checklist” Mentality – Zuchtriegel criticizes the impulse to visit famous sites just for bragging rights, rather than meaningful engagement.
  • “It’s the idea that you come to a place with some kind of list... then you’ve been there and that’s it. And I thought this was really a pity.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (06:50)
• Artifact Theft and the Pompeii “Curse” – Despite video surveillance and laws, small-scale theft persists. Many return stolen items, haunted by guilt and bad luck, believing in a curse.
  • “There’s also a legend about a curse lying on everyone who takes something from Pompeii… I have experienced a number of tragedies… and the fact that they attribute this to something they’ve done…” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (07:39)
• Global Looting Challenge – Extensive illegal tunneling and systematic looting persist, both locally and as part of a broader illicit trade. Provenance matters deeply for archaeological meaning.
  • “It’s not the material value… it’s that this really destroys archaeology… Don’t buy anything. Ancient objects, go to museums. Don’t have it at your home. That’s the best response, I think.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (09:14)

Museum Ethics and Repatriation: The Elgin Marbles

• On Repatriation – While acknowledging the Elgin Marbles are entwined with British Museum history, Zuchtriegel advocates their return to Greece, especially in light of the new Acropolis Museum.
  • “I think it should be considered to give them back… If you have to put them into a museum, a museum close to the place where they were found.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (11:10)

Unexpected Discoveries & Archaeological Thrill

• Chance and Technology in Excavation – Many major finds, including Greek temples and the Dionysian frescoes at Pompeii, were accidental, typically revealed during conservation work rather than research-focused digs.
  • “We did this excavation mainly for conservation… at some point we stumbled across capitals and pieces of columns… so we understood there must be a building…” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (15:17)
• The Joy of Surprise – The unpredictability and discovery are core to archaeological excitement.
  • “It’s actually the surprise that you always… you never find what you expect. And that’s thankfully, thank God it’s like that, because otherwise it would be quite boring.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (16:22)

Personal and Professional Journey

• Controversial Appointment – Zuchtriegel’s youth and perceived inexperience stirred significant resistance upon his appointment.
  • “Too young, inexperienced. So we had people resigning from the scientific board… I have to concentrate on what I would like to do in Pompeii.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (16:53)
• Building Trust – Through dedication and teamwork, he overcame skepticism and guided significant new projects.

The Eruption of 79 AD: Catastrophe and Preservation

• Human Experience in Crisis – Ancient citizens, unaware of Vesuvius’s volcanic threat, experienced the disaster as a cosmic apocalypse.
  • “They thought maybe this is now the end of the world… you had buildings collapsing… then finally it stopped… people thought, maybe it’s over. And no, it wasn’t.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (18:10)
• Impact of the Eruption’s Aftermath – The process of death and preservation uniquely fossilized Pompeii’s inhabitants, allowing for intimate encounters with the past.
  • “The bodies of the dead dissolve over time. But it has been preserved as negative, as an imprint, as a cavity in the underground, as a so cast. And you can make casts… You can actually look into their face, something very touching and unique.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (18:10)
  • Notable quote from a colleague: “This is us. We are what we excavate in a way…we are the same fragile human beings like them.” — Alessandro (reported by Gabriel Zuchtriegel, 21:04)
• Emotional Resonance – Zuchtriegel reflects on the emotional toll and the universality of human fragility.
  • “You see the children, you see the hope of their lives that were ended so abruptly. And that always reminds me of my own mortality and fragility.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (22:02)

Recent Excavations and Discoveries

• Largest Digs in Decades – Current excavations cover about 9,000 square meters—offering opportunities for new types of analysis that earlier archaeologists missed.
  • “Now we… can do many things, like analyzing the skeletons… In the early years of the excavation, [remains were] simply thrown away. A huge loss of data.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (22:49)
• Extraordinary Finds: Ancient ‘Pizza’ – A bakery fresco depicting a flatbread, possibly an ancestor to pizza, captured public imagination.
  • “It seems almost looks like a pizza… Of course, that can’t be, because they had no tomatoes at the time and no mozzarella. But… we could reasonably call it the ancestor of the pizza…” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (23:48)

Personal Reflections

• Solitude in Pompeii – Zuchtriegel cherishes nocturnal walks through the empty ancient city, feeling a deep sense of connection to its past.
  • “In the nighttime, without any light… it’s almost as if the city comes back to life in a way… you feel like the owners must have just left five minutes ago.” — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (24:33)

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “Archaeology has this focus on the material evidence, so it’s in a way more democratic because the texts often are written by the powerful...”
  — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (03:35)

• “This is us. We are what we excavate in a way... we are the same fragile human beings like them.”
  — Alessandro, via Gabriel Zuchtriegel (21:04)

• “Don’t buy anything. Ancient objects, go to museums. Don’t have it at your home. That’s the best response, I think.”
  — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (09:14)

• “You see the children, you see the hope of their lives that were ended so abruptly. And that always reminds me of my own mortality and fragility.”
  — Gabriel Zuchtriegel (22:02)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:15 – On the democracy of archaeology and forgotten lives of Pompeii
• 04:37 – Discovery of social stratification and signs of a middle class
• 06:50 – Critique of “collector syndrome” in tourism
• 07:39 – Theft, atonement, and the legend of the Pompeii curse
• 09:14 – The international looting problem and its impact on archaeology
• 11:10 – Should the British Museum return the Elgin Marbles?
• 15:17 – Serendipitous discoveries at Paestum and Pompeii
• 16:53 – Overcoming controversy as a young director
• 18:10 – Harrowing details of the eruption and unique preservation of victims
• 21:04 – Emotional impact of encountering Pompeii’s victims
• 22:49 – Scope and significance of current excavations
• 23:48 – The “ancestor of pizza” fresco find
• 24:33 – Zuchtriegel’s poetic nocturnal walks in Pompeii

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Conclusion

This conversation highlights Gabriel Zuchtriegel’s thoughtful and passionate stewardship of Pompeii and the broader questions facing archaeology today: who gets to tell history, how should the past be preserved, and what responsibilities do modern institutions and individuals have toward ancient heritage. Through Zuchtriegel’s eyes, Pompeii is not just an artifact, but a living lesson in humanity, vulnerability, and the enduring quest to understand our collective story.

Transcript

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[Michael Barclay]

Hello, I'm Michael Barclay, BBC presenter, and this is the interview from the BBC World. The best conversations coming out of the BBC people shaping our world from all.

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Over the world today we are spending.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Trillions on war and peanuts on peace.

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[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

I don't have army, I don't have missile rockets. I have my body, I have my voice.

[Interviewer]

I love singing.

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And so my goal was always to.

[Interviewer]

Do better and better at it.

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I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me.

[Michael Barclay]

For this interview, I met Gabriel Zuktriegel, director of one of the world's most important archaeological sites, Pompeii in southern Italy. The ancient Roman city that was buried in ash and pumice when nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. You're going to hear about the power of archaeology to teach us about our past in the way the written records cannot.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

How did enslaved people live? How did you know prostitutes live? How did the poor live? How did their apartments and houses look? That's something where the written sources are really, really scarce and tell us very Little. But in Pompeii you get everything and so you can try to reconstruct the society as a whole and also make some assumptions on the numbers and the, the social stratification.

[Michael Barclay]

In this conversation, Gabriel Zuktriegel also tells me about the lengths people will go to steal artifacts from Pompeii, as well as the rumoured curse that sits upon anyone who, who does so. And he calls upon the British Museum to consider returning the contested Elgin Marbles to Greece. Born in Germany and only 44 years old, his appointment as Pompey's director in 2021 was controversial, with critics claiming he did not have enough experience for such a high profile role. But under his leadership, ongoing excavations and have unearthed a number of significant finds. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Gabriel Zuctriegel.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Archaeology has this focus on the material evidence, so it's in a way more democratic because the texts often are written by the powerful and they represent their idea of how things should be remembered. Say Julius Caesar writes about the wars he conducted, but then you see the archaeological record and this is really the case in Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius did not make any difference between the wealthy and the poor. And the stables and workshops and the rich, wealthy houses of the town with their beautiful paintings. And so you get the whole picture. And that fascinated me always.

[Interviewer]

You're very careful, Gabriel, to point out that it's the rich who tend to be remembered in history because they leave behind buildings, objects, documents. But something you're anxious to discover is how the less privileged people of Pompeii live too.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

And that's where Pompeii really helps us a lot. How did enslaved people live? Where did they sleep? How did they spend their days? How did you know, prostitutes? How did the poor live? How did their apartments and houses look? And that's something where the written sources are really, really scarce and tell us very little. But in Pompeii you get everything. And so you can try to reconstruct the society as a whole and also make some assumptions on the numbers and the social stratification. And what's interesting, you can see also I learned in university that the ancients had no middle class. That that was an idea totally modern, because we archaeologists usually come from middle class backgrounds. So that's an invention, a projection, right? But actually, if you look at Pompeii, you can see that there is something like a middle class houses that are big maybe, but have a lot of paintings. And you can see both the ambition to rise Socially, but also the fear of declining. And so I think it was a very dynamic and highly complex society. And that's really interesting. And we found a slave room a few years ago which was really touching and interesting. Three beds in a very, very small room of 16 square meters. No wall decoration, no floor, just earth rats, mice there infesting the living spaces, which were the same time a depot for amphoras. And so you really get very close to the daily experience of these people.

[Interviewer]

While a student, you were a tour guide at Berlin's Pergamon Museum, where you noticed something that you've called collector syndrome.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Well, yeah, it's the idea that you come to a place with some kind of list. You have to see Pompeii, you have to see the Louvre, you have to see the Eiffel Tower. And then you've been there and that's it. And I thought this was really a pity and we should work on being really present. And maybe then it's not so much, you know, the Mona Lisa or whatever, but maybe you discover something you didn't expect and that's maybe much more important for your visit than the great art work that everybody talks about, just ticking.

[Michael Barclay]

Them off on a list.

[Interviewer]

There's also a problem to do with people taking the collection of antiques a bit far in terms of people actually wanting to pick things up, steal things, nick things. You've had that at Pompeii.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

We have that. We get basically every month, a few letters and sendings, where people send back things they took from Pompeii, sometimes years or decades ago. Often it, you know, small stones or. Yeah. Objects that have no particular value. But it's the idea of taking something, of owning something, and then after a while, there is an afterthought. And there's also a legend about a curse lying on. On everyone who takes something from Pompeii. And the interesting fact is that they often write about this. And so I often get letters where people write, they I' I took this years ago, but they tell you, I'm sorry, I want to give it back. And I have experienced a number of tragedies. Sometimes they talk about losing their jobs and also cancer, divorce. And the fact that they attribute this to something they've done and then realized it's not okay because Pompeii should be for everybody and should be protected. And so I want to repair it. So don't take away anything from Pompeii. We have also video surveillance, so it's also a criminal offense.

[Interviewer]

You explain how illegal Looting, forgery and illegal art dealing have been occurring over the generations in Pompeii. But it's extraordinary the lengths that some go to, isn't it?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Making tiny tunnels, making tunnels from their basement in their private house, which was built on a Roman villa, and so one under their basement, and they started building a network of tunnels which eventually went below neighboring houses too. And so very sadly looted this sign. They cut off frescoes from the walls and took objects. It's part of a worldwide phenomenon, unfortunately, and we are very active to combat this. But there's still other cases, unfortunately. It's still something that's going on and it will not stop until there are still people who buy things with uncertain or dubious provenance. So it's really important that museums and private collectors are sensitive to this topic because it creates such an enormous damage. It's not the material values, right? That's only a small part of it, the silver coin or whatever, it's that this really destroys archaeology, because even if you recover the coin, it makes a huge difference for us if it comes from a tomb or from a shop or from under a threshold, as some kind of building sacrifice. So really don't buy anything. Ancient objects, go to museums. Don't have it at your home. That's the best response, I think.

[Interviewer]

Well, there are, as you've suggested, institutions which have benefits quite enormously from controversial acquisitions, one of which, of course, is the Elgin Marbles, owned by the British Museum. Do you think they should be returned?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

It's part of the history, in a way, of the British Museum. And you can also argue that they were taken away from the Athenian Acropolis. Lord Elgin had a permission to carry away some stones. He interpreted that in a very generous way. By the time the Ottoman authorities, the Greek state didn't exist. And of course, we have to understand that for Greece, the Parthenon, Athens, that's really a national monument. A few years ago, the new Acropolis Museum was inaugurated. There's space for the Elgin Marbles. I think it should be considered to give them back. I think the British Museum is a wonderful place, a wonderful museum, and it could brilliantly survive even without the Elgin Marbles. So I think it's always important, as CH Lawrence said in a book, Etruscan places, museums are wrong anyhow. But if you have them, let them be small, they're like blues. Let them be local. Don't take the things, if you have to put them into a museum, a museum close to the place where they were found.

[Michael Barclay]

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[Michael Barclay]

For this episode of the interview, I'm speaking to Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Director of Pompeii. Like many Europeans in the arts world, Gabriel is well read and well versed in music about which he's passionate. Perhaps not surprising given that his father was a piano teacher in southern Germany near Lake Constance. To meet he's unassuming, charming and erudite. He speaks several languages and has a German wife who he met in Italy, and they have two children. Before taking charge at Pompeii, he was at one of my favourite archaeological sites in southern Italy, Paestum, which is only a few hundred yards from the ocean, so you can be on the beach one minute and the next hop over to see three beautiful Greek temples. Well, let's return to my conversation with Gabriel Zuktriegel.

[Interviewer]

You were there, Paestum, when another Greek temple was uncovered intact, securing Restoration of the city walls.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Yeah, that's often fascinating about our work. Also in Pompeii, you start excavating, not so much for research reasons. We weren't looking for this temple as we weren't looking for the Dionysian frescoes we discovered a few months ago in Pompeii. We did this excavation mainly for conservation reasons, on the city walls. And at some point we stumbled across capitals and pieces of columns. And so we understood there must be a building, a small Doric building, the early 5th century BC, and we started to do. We didn't know where it was, so we started a geomagnetic prospection. You can actually look beneath the ground with modern technology. And we clearly saw it. We started excavating and that was.

[Interviewer]

Is that what is so exciting about an archaeological dig? I mean, is that if you were to say to somebody who's never been on one, what is it that is so exciting?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Well, it's often people ask, what would you like to find? And that's kind of what we can't tell. Of course, sometimes we're looking for specific things, but it's actually the surprise that you always. You never find what you expect. And that's thankfully, thank God it's like that, because otherwise it would be quite boring.

[Interviewer]

Gabriel, you were appointed director of Pompeii in 2021. Was it a controversial appointment at all?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer]

Why?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Too young, inexperienced. So we had people resigning from the scientific board and writing letters. So it was a very heavy faith for me, my family, I wasn't prepared for that. So I asked a friend, a journalist, to read the. The press review and to let me know only if there's something I had to reply to, because I said I have to stop. I have to concentrate on what I would like to do in Pompeii. And I have to say, I found a really extraordinary team there. And so we started, and thanks to the people in Pompeii, we could overcome this initial difficulties and convince everyone that we were doing our best and that Pompeii was in safe hands, which is important because it's really a very, very fragile and complex site.

[Interviewer]

Of course, it wasn't in safe hands in 79 A.D. when Vesuvius erupted. Tell me a little bit about that. How did people succumb? How did they die?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

The eruption was totally unexpected. People didn't know that Mount Vesuvius was a volcano. They had no modern science, geology, volcanology, so they were shocked. They were terrified. Later still, after decades, there were stories about giants in between the Smoke were seen, the giants rebelling against the gods. Many thought there were no gods and the gods had abandoned the world. And there was a new age of eternal night for the world. Because the people in Pompeii obviously didn't know that it was only in Pompeii. They thought maybe this is now the end of the world. And so they took shelter because it started raining small pumice stones, the Lapilli. Only unfortunately, this rain went something like 17 hours. You had buildings collapsing. People couldn't get out of their houses anymore because the Lapilli had reached a height of about 3 meters. And then finally it stopped in the early morning of the 25th of August. But people thought, maybe it's over. And no, it wasn't over. The second phase was deadly for everybody. Nobody survived who was still in Pompeii at that time, because the huge column of ash and smoke and material that had formed above Mount Vesuvius started to collapse. There was no pressure coming from beneath anymore. And so it formed these waves of hot ash and very high temperatures, 200 degrees, 200 degrees in Pompeii, people instantly died and were covered by the hot ash that then became solid. So this is really unique about Pompeii. So the solid ash, the bodies of the dead dissolve over time, the textiles, the flesh, the hair. But it has been preserved as negative, as an imprint, as a cavity in the underground, as a so cast. And you can make casts. And there you have children and women and men who have died during the eruption. You can actually look into their face, something very touching and unique. And there are about a hundred of these casts made in the last 150 years.

[Interviewer]

It must be, when you come face to face with archaeology in that way, something that kind of transcends the everyday cataloging.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

I remember one of our colleagues, we were excavating the skeletons of two women and a child who died in the first phase of the eruption. And that was horrible to see. But then at the same time, it's such a rich source of information, of evidence. You can determine the sex and age and if they had diseases and whatever. And one of our colleagues, Alessandro, he said, looking at them, he said, this is us. We are what we excavate in a way. The distance, suddenly you recognize that these people who died 2,000 years ago, I mean, in our bodies we have the same skeletons. We are the same fragile human beings like them.

[Michael Barclay]

When you hear that, does that really.

[Interviewer]

Put you on the scene of all of those people suddenly being wiped out?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

I think it speaks to the child in us. And as adults, we should not weep. You know, we have to be strong. But then there's. When you hear it, you almost have to weep. Right. And it's so touching. Yeah, that's what I think. When I see the victims of the eruption, the children especially. You see the children, you see the hope of their lives that were ended so abruptly. And that always reminds me of my own mortality and fragility.

[Interviewer]

You've been overseeing now one of the biggest digs in Pompeii for over 70 years. How big is it?

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

It's about 9,000 square meters inside and outside the ancient city. This is a huge responsibility, of course, because everything that was excavated then has to be preserved and restored and monitored. And it's also a huge opportunity for new research because now we. That weren't there in the past. And so we can do many things, like analyzing the skeletons and bones that were in the early years of the excavation, simply thrown away. A huge loss of data, of course. Also a questionable treatment of these human remains, of course. So it's really a very, very fascinating fertile moment for research on ancient Pompeii.

[Interviewer]

There were some extraordinary finds, weren't there? One was a bakery with an incredible fresco.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

Yeah, it was much debated, especially in Italy. It seems almost looks like a pizza, because, of course, that can't be, because they had no tomatoes at the time and no mozzarella. But it's probably a kind of flat bread, a pita bread with some very simple things, dates, maybe some spices, and then you see a cup of wine next to it. So that's in some form the. The ancestor of the pizza, I think we could reasonably call it reading.

[Michael Barclay]

One of the many fascinating little things.

[Interviewer]

That came out of your book was the fact that you like to go for nocturnal walks in Pompeii.

[Gabriel Zuchtriegel]

That's a privilege of the director who works in Pompeii, that we can be there also after closing time, which is really magic. In the nighttime, without any light, only the light of the stars and the moon, the sounds. It's almost as if the city comes back to life in a way, which is often the case. If you go into the houses of Pompeii, you feel like the owners must have just left five minutes ago.

[Michael Barclay]

Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. You'll find more in depth conversations on the interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with former US Vice president Kamala Harris, global education activist Malala Yousafzai, and Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. Until the next time. Goodbye for now.

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