It’s nearly the end of the run of A Day in Pompeii at the Cincinnati Museum Center, and I am so glad I made it!
This is a wonderful exhibit on lots of levels, beautifully laid out, well managed and organized – which means you can really focus on the wonderful artifacts you’re seeing.? There are also several short films worked into the production, at points where you’re grateful to be sitting down.? It took my friend and I nearly 2-1/2 hours to walk through, with the portable phone speakers we rented for $4 – they added a little time, but lots of great information about daily life in Pompeii.? Particularly, with an adult speaker phone, additional info on the things grown ups do, and the art they enjoyed.
This is really an immersion exhibit, that gives a real sense of walking down those ancient streets, conducting business, stopping for a bite to eat, shopping and then heading home to those beautiful work of art dwellings, beautiful in themselves, and then filled with frescoes, sculpture, great furniture, fabrics, jewelry, utensils.? Even their gardens, wonderfully designed,? were filled with beautiful art.
Then, at the end, a recreation of the tragedy itself, which destroyed and buried the town of 20,000 (plus slaves) in just a bit over 24 hours.? Awful.? Followed by a room with casts of the bodies, human and animal, of the victims.? I was so relieved to learn that about 18,000 escaped, while mourning for the slave in shackles, the child, the husband and wife who did not.
This is a powerful journey.? I urge you to take it!