An Italian art restorer has led a successful battle to reclaim priceless frescoes at the legendary Jewish fortress of Masada.
Maurizio Tagliapietra answered an appeal to save the 1st-century AD frescoes - comparable to Pompeii's for their richness and variety - from the original conservation materials applied to them when they were discovered in the 1960s.
"Back then the techniques were supposedly cutting-edge but, over time, they turned out to be disastrous," said Zeev Margalit of the Israeli conservation agency INNPA.
"Paradoxically, the frescoes suffered more damage in the last 40 years than they did in the previous 2,000 years," he said.
Margalit paid tribute to Tagliapietra's work at the head of an international team that managed to reverse the corrosive effect of the 1960 materials, working over the last two years.
"It's been an heroic effort and it couldn't have been achieved without the skills from Italy, which leads the world in this field".
To save them from any further threat the frescoes have been removed and moved to a Jerusalem museum where they will form part of a major collection on Israel's cultural heritage.
Masada is a symbol to Jews the world over because it was there, in 73 AD, that some 1,000 Jewish rebels decided to take their own lives rather than give in to a massive besieging army headed by the Emperor Titus in person.
Tagliapietra, for his part, said he had won his own battle, in one of the toughest challenges he has ever faced.
"It was the culmination of my career as a restorer," he said.
