The new Director was chosen from among 44 candidates, 10 of whom were foreign-born, who submitted themselves for consideration by the Commission chaired by Marta Cartabia, President emeritus of the Constitutional Court and current Minister of Justice. Following the selection procedure, which concluded with the interviews of the ten shortlisted candidates conducted on the 10th and 11th of February, the Commission identified three candidates for submission to the Minister, from amongst whom was appointed the new Director who took up office today.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, born in 1981 in Weingarten, Germany, studied classical archaeology, prehistory and Greek philology in Berlin, Rome and Bonn, where in 2010 he completed a PhD on the Latin site of Gabii near Rome. He was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute and of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which in 2012 led him to the University of Basilicata (Matera) for a three-year research project on the subject of the Greek colonisation of the Ionic coast. He has taught at the universities of Bonn, Matera and Naples ‘Federico II’, and has authored numerous articles and monographs, including ‘Colonization and Subalternity in Classical Greece’, Cambridge University Press 2018. In 2019 he was awarded the Ravenna Festival prize. In 2015, he collaborated in the Great Pompeii Project as a member of the Technical Secretariat. In 2015 he took on the Directorship of the Archaeological Park of Paestum, and subsequently that of the site of Velia in 2020, which are both inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Zuchtriegel, who is married with two children, is German in origin, and became an Italian citizen in 2020.