They've been unveiling it for the past hundred years, by the way.

A NYTimes article from today has a mildly misleading title. "Archeologists Unveil Majestic Roman Ruins", it says, talking about new discoveries in ancient Ostia, a Roman port town at the mouth of the river Tiber. The irony, of course, is that the four newly uncovered buildings aside, Ostia, as the article itself admits, has not been "unveiled" at all, but has rather been sitting there for the better part of recorded history and has been a site for archeological digs since the early 20th century.

At the same time it is nearly three times the size of Pompeii, features multi-story houses that according to the NYTimes article "rival the primacy of Pompeii" and is located a mere 20 kilometers from Rome. Everything would point to this being the worlds biggest tourist-magnet.

Alas! the NYTimes headline is also right. For many people, myself included, Ostia was literally unveiled by this article. I admit that I had heard nothing of Ostia before coming upon this article, and I take quite an interest in ancient Rome. The Times also hits the nail on head by pointing out that in the end, Pompeii is more famous because of its more dramatic history.

This is a potent claim. A lot of the value we place in cultural heritage is determined not by the "objective value" of the item, but by the stories and myths associated with it. The Mona Lisa's already impressive popularity skyrocketed when it was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and a lot of the Elgin marbles' claim to fame probably comes less from the uniqueness of the works and more from their contested history.

As such controversies, stories and myths become a part of cultural heritage, then there is nothing wrong with them per se. Not only do they enrich the collective consciousness, but also they probably get more kids to museums than good old-fashioned pot-shards without exciting stories to tell. At the same time, wonderful places like Ostia go unnoticed.