In the year 79 AD Mount Vesuvius erupted and buried the City of Pompeii under a layer of ash and pumice reaching up to 6 meters in thickness.
The well preserved artifacts, showing the high standards of cultural achievements, provide a detailed insight into the life of this City of approximately 11,000 inhabitants.
The Addition to the original ROM
The red brick building on the left is part of the Original ROM.
Many statues were unearthed,
perfectly preserved due to the lack of air or moisture.
While paintings on paper or canvas would have been destroyed,
the popular art form of Mosaic was preserved almost in tact.
In the warning below, the following images are said to contain
"graphic and explicit material"
Times were different:
Pornography seems to have been an accepted art form.
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All roles in theaters were played by men wearing masks
This exhibit shows no human remains.
The cavities left by decaying matter were filled
with a very liquid mixture of Plaster of Paris.
Once hardened the surrounding matter was carefully removed
leaving a perfect cast of the animal or person engulfed.
The ROM has, of course, many other exhibits.
Many of a permanent nature.
Its exhibits of pre-historic animal skeletons, for instance,
is second to none.
However, once I saw the "Pompeii", I was in no mood
to see anything else. Even though I knew that what we see
are plaster casts, the knowledge that these were people of all ages,
caught by an unforeseen natural catastrophe made the viewing of anything else impossible.
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