This is a multi-media exhibition based on one shown at the RMN – Grand Palais in Paris in 2020. It opened at the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in Canberra on 13 December 2024 and will run until 4 May 2025.
The choir of the Dante Aligheri Society of Canberra was invited to sing at the Official Opening and its rendition of Neapolitan folk songs helped to remind the audience of the location of the ancient city of Pompeii, a few kilometres from Naples and in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. The well-known song Funiculi Funicula uses the Neapolitan dialect to poke fun at the Italian word funiculare for the cable car (fune) that was built to take visitors to the summit of Mount Vesuvius. Unfortunately, this cable car was destroyed in the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius and was never rebuilt.
The exhibition features, every fifteen minutes, a simulated eruption, complete with heart-stopping sound effects and a visual representation of the pyroclastic (fiery fragments Gk) cloud that travelled at over 150 kilometres per hour and engulfed the entire city.
The layout of the exhibition makes the material highly accessible for visitors. The spine of the display is a mock-up of a street, shops and houses. The volcano takes up the entire back of the hall. On the left side of the “street” are the personal items recovered from the excavations, including the heart-rending plaster casts, very respectfully displayed, which encased actual inhabitants of the doomed city. Several brief but very informative audio-visual presentations provide details of the 80 or so items on display and of the fresco paintings in the houses. 
The right-hand side of the “streetscape” has audio-visual material on the series of excavations of the site, beginning with the rather clumsy one of 1747, commissioned by the Bourbon King of Naples, who wanted the rare antiquities to provide the centrepiece of his efforts to make Naples the cultural centre of Europe. This exhibition displays personal items of individual residents of Pompeii; one inhabitant was Gaius Plinius Secundus, Pliny the Elder. He was the encyclopedist who left Naturalis Historiae (History of the Natural World), a compendium of information from the life of giraffes to the stars in the firmament.
It is appropriate to acknowledge him at the Pompeii Exhibition as he died on the beach during the eruption. He was the “Admiral” of the Roman fleet at Misenum. He ordered a galley to go into the bay to rescue people being pelted with pumice stones; he wore a pillow tied to his head as protection. The hot gases from the pyroclastic cloud were overwhelming and the 58-year-old Pliny died, asphyxiated on the beach on that cataclysmic day in AD79.
The historian Tacitus asked Pliny’s nephew, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Younger, for an account of the eruption and of the older man’s courage and bravery. Pliny the Younger replied:
“Petis ut tibi avunculi mei exitum scribam, quo verius tradere posteris possis. Gratias ago nam video morti eius si celebretur a te immortalem gloriam esse propositam.”
You ask that I write about the death of my uncle, so that you might be able to hand it down more accurately to posterity. Thank you – for I see that the everlasting renown of his death is established if he were honoured by you.
Perhaps it will make a visit more meaningful knowing of one person in particular who died that day. Again, to quote Pliny:
“Quamvis enim pulcherrimarum clade terrarum ut populi ut urbes memorabili casu, quasi semper victurus occiderit, quamvis ipse plurima opera et mansura condiderit, multum tamen perpetuitati eius scriptorium tuorum aeternitas addet.”
For although he died in the destruction of the loveliest of lands, as whole populations and as cities (did) because of a memorable disaster, it will be as if he lives ever on; although he himself composed works both plentiful and destined to endure, nevertheless the immortality of your written words will add much to his perpetuity.
The National Museum and the Italian Embassy hosted an evening on 6 March at the Ambassador’s Residence. A panel was introduced by the Director of the ANM, Katherine McMahon. She was most enthusiastic about the reception of this Exhibition, visited by over 100,000 people during its first 80 days.
The well-prepared Virginia Trioli, of ABC fame, moderated the panel of experts by asking brief searching questions and giving the panelists the maximum time to show their expertise. Estelle Lazar, a forensic archaeologist, spoke of the interpretation of the remains of the victims. Rosa Didonna, a vulcanologist, entranced the audience with details of lava, magma, pyroclastic clouds and other natural phenomena no-one ever wants to encounter. Caillan Davenport, head of Classical Studies at ANU put the fascination of Pompeii into an historical and personal context. Virginia Rigney from the Canberra Museum, made some interesting links between Sidney Nolan’s visit to Pompeii in the early 1950s and some of his works on the Australian drought, its imagery greatly influenced by what he saw at Pompeii.
The ANM has not issued a catalogue of the Exhibition; it has gone one better and devoted its entire quarterly publication to a series of articles relevant to the exhibition. The magazine is brilliantly illustrated and is an entertaining as well as informative presentation. At $20 it is worth every cent.
What is the most poignant item in the exhibition?
The carbonized loaf of bread, the panis quadratus, baked by the freedman Polybius (many lives Gk) is very similar to the “pull-apart” still available at most bakeries. The people of Pompeii were just like us, and we connect with them through time and space at this exhibition.
Simply don’t miss it!
Dr Sergio Sergi
Committee
Societe Dante Alighieri
Canberra
