Recovering Pompeii

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A wall showing the heavy damage due to blackening of cinnabar in the Poppeas villa in Oplonti. Credit: Mario Pagano.
A wall showing the heavy damage due to blackening of cinnabar in the Poppea's villa in Oplonti. Credit: Mario Pagano.

Artists in ancient Pompeii painted the town red 2,000 years ago with a brilliant crimson pigment that dominated many of the doomed city's wall paintings. Now scientists from France and Italy are reporting in the journal Analytical Chemistry why those paintings are undergoing a mysterious darkening. The synchrotron light of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble (France) has provided new insight into this process and what produces it.


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