The Pompeii exhibition is not just for academics or students of archaeology, but a much wider public, particularly in Australia.
Multi-sensory: Large-scale digital projections and moving soundscapes are hallmarks of the Pompeii exhibition on at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra until May. Image supplied by National Museum of Australia
The Australian interest in Pompeii can be traced back to 1817 with reports in the Sydney Gazette on excavations in Pompeii. In NSW, in 2024, 7755 Year 12 students were enrolled in HSC Ancient History, with Pompeii a major focus of the core course and all students sitting the exam answered questions about Pompeii. The cumulative effect of cohort after cohort studying Pompeii is that NSW must be one of the most knowledgeable places in the world with respect to this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Why is there so much interest in this archaeological site? There is a fascination with the city’s destruction by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the late autumn of 79 CE. The recovery of frescoes, artifacts and even the shapes of the people quite simply makes the topic much more tangible than the finds from other archaeological sites. There is an opportunity to empathise with the dead when visiting the site or looking at objects from the site in an exhibition.
On a personal note, I became fascinated with Pompeii when I travelled there as an undergraduate student. I saw a city that needed explanation and focused my attention on the use of streets as a means to explain the city. At the time most studies were focused on a single house. My work, for example the book Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (Routledge 1994), has influenced others to embark on their own studies of Pompeii. One of my former students even works at the site!
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Even with two-thirds of the 66 hectares within the walls of Pompeii excavated, there is still more to discover through research. We know half the population of Pompeii was under the age of eighteen, but have yet to see an effective account of the lives of children in the city. School was not for everyone – so what did these kids do? Were they exploited through child labour? Equally, there is a real need to consider the lives of the disabled in the past, to date there is no study of people with a disability who lived in Pompeii.
The Pompeii exhibition at the National Museum of Australia features an immersive then-and-now streetscape created by French media company Gedeon Programmes, complete with shadowy figures passing by contrasted with the façade of a street today.
Precious metal: A bronze jug excavated in 2018 from the House of Leda and the Swan. Image supplied by National Museum of Australia
A highlight of the space is an immersive image of Vesuvius in 79 CE which recreates the famous eruption every 15 minutes. Witness images of falling debris and the pyroclastic surges that, if you were there in 79 CE, would have killed you. I have attended many Pompeii exhibitions, many incorrectly featuring lava spewing from Vesuvius. But in this case Gedeon Programmes has produced a fantastic representation of the destruction of Pompeii with real artistic flair. It is subtle and stimulating.
The must-see objects
Sundial It is a simple piece of stone that showed the hours of the day. The Romans had set times for bathing - the eigth hour of daylight, dinner at the ninth hour of daylight - and even for the opening of bars. Interestingly, it has been found that many sundials in Pompeii were poorly calibrated and were inaccurate.
Frescos from a garden This fresco has been in many travelling exhibitions but it is a favourite because it is crammed with plants and birds alongside decorative elements and provides a counterpoint to the concept that the Romans were just about wars and conquests. The excavation of gardens in Pompeii has been a revelation of how Romans lived – the gardens account for almost 19 per cent of all land use in the ancient city.
Outdoor life: Fresco of a garden, painted plaster, first century CE, excavated in 1975 from the House of the Golden Bracelet. Image supplied by National Museum of Australia
A bronze statuette of Hercules Just a few centimetres in height, with club and lionskin, this muscled deity would have been placed in a household shrine alongside other gods that the family and their slaves worshipped.
Paint pots With visible pigments from the very day Vesuvius erupted, including the famous Pompeian blue that upon discovery caused European interiors to adopt it as a fashionable colour in the eighteenth century.
Cooking pots Discovered in the house of Julius Polybius, the collection includes a pottery frying pan, a saucepan with a lid and charmingly, a face-pot which is literally a pottery vessel with a face on it. Face pots are found right across Europe in the Roman period.
Carbonised bread No Pompeii exhibition is complete unless it has this item – it is stunning to gaze upon bread made on the day Vesuvius erupted in the late Autumn of 79 CE. This piece is not a complete loaf and you can't help wondering what happened to the person who ate this bread?
Broken bread: charred organic remains of a loaf of bread, made on the day of the eruption in 79 CE. Image supplied by the National Museum of Australia
Silver drinking cup At Roman parties and festivals, you used your own distinctive drinking cup and many of these would be inherited from grandparents and parents.
A glass bottle The Roman world experienced a sharp uptick in the use of glass. If you can’t get to the exhibition in Canberra, there is an excellent collection of Roman glass right on campus at the Macquarie University History Museum – open every day from Monday to Friday!
Casts of the bodies Observe casts of three adults, a child and a dog made by archaeologists pouring plaster into cavities left by the bodies of the dead. It is a haunting reminder of the lives lost in 79 CE and the terror of the eruption.
Ray Laurence is a Professor of Ancient History in the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University.
Images by George Serras, National Museum of Australia.