es the paintings to fade. Since many houses have lost their ceilings after so many years, it is easy to guess the damage it would do.F) Erosion by Tourists:Not surprisingly, Pompeii is a very famous site to visit. With an average of more then 5000 visitors every day, with numbers sometimes reaching 22 000, like on Easter Monday, the flow of tourist has to be taken into account.The thousands of daily visitors, even if they were on their best behavior, would still cause problems simply by walking around! Ancient unprotected sidewalks have been used through, often leaving lead plumbing exposed, which is in turn broken, damaged or goes missing. In most other Roman cities, plumbing would not have been so close to the surface, but this plumbing was temporally installed after the earthquake in 62. Those same sidewalks would have suffered the same fate in Antiquity, but a sidewalk would never have gone without reparation and maintenance for millennia back then! Visitors also leave their traces on walls, those giant backpacks scraping against walls, fingers running on ancient frescoes. The passage of visitors is more obvious in small areas, and is less evident on large areas, where the damage is spread out. There is also the problem of vandalism and robbery. People leave their names, usually on painted surfaces to make sure their legacy to posterity is readable. People also take home little pieces of marble or of a mosaic, a task made easy by the work of plants. Others just steal entire frescoes, like in 1977, when 14 frescoes were hacked out of the house of the Gladiators. "It should have been a warning, but nearly 600 more items were stolen from Pompeii over the next 15 years, according to the Italian Archeoclub, a presevationist group."There is also the problem of familiarity felt by the inhabitants of the region. It is hard to be very considerate when Pompeii is the place you go every Sunday for picnic, almost like a public park....
