Karl Jakob Weber

Karl Jakob Weber (12 August 1712 – 1764) was a Swiss architect and engineer who worked under the orders of the Spanish military engineer

, by means of which the European intelligentsia became aware of the details of what was being recovered.

Weber's unwilling collaborator was

, previously in charge of the excavations, whose treasure-hunting technique provided the fine bronzes and other works of art that kept royal patronage stimulated. Alcubierre was jealous of Weber, whose system of excavating whole rooms with a concern for context makes him a heroic forerunner of today's architectural profession, and attempted to sabotage Weber's work. On Weber's death, the architect Francisco La Vega was put in charge of excavations.

Weber's plan of the still-buried Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, which was being explored room by room by smashing openings through frescoed walls, is still the basis of our understanding of its layout, which was echoed in the construction of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California.

Weber was born at

plan, and several villas at Stabiae, bringing the first professionalism to the Royal digs.

References

• Christopher Charles Parslow, 1995. Rediscovering Antiquity: Karl Weber and the Excavation of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae (Cambridge University Press). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 96.12.10

External links

• AD79 Year of Destruction