Abstract

The excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum fascinated the Hispanic American travellers who visited Italy between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and wrote about their journeys. Their accounts provide key sources for a cultural analysis of classical reception in Hispanic America. Here, we shall examine the testimonies published by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Pedro del Río Zañartu and Bernardo Gentilini, who all travelled from Chile to Pompeii and produced varying impressions of the ruins at Pompeii that were largely determined by their life experiences, beliefs and social standing. In their accounts, they often compare ancient Pompeii and Chile, casting a critical eye on the moral decadence of the Roman Empire, but they also express admiration for the ruins from a historical and artistic standpoint, thus exemplifying the cultural interest aroused among the elites of Hispanic America by the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum.