Premiere presentation in the southeast
Mobile’s Gulf Coast Exploreum hosts the prestigious international exhibition – A Day in Pompeii –January 12 to June 3, 2007. The exhibit, a collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei, continues the Exploreum’s blockbuster exhibit series, which included the highly successful 2005 The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition.
A Day in Pompeii takes visitors back in time to experience life and death in this cosmopolitan city. The exhibition features over 250 exceptional objects that lay buried in Pompeii’s ruins for over 17 centuries. Included are room-size frescoes, marble and bronze sculptures, jewelry, gold coins and everyday household items – all of which evoke the richness and culture of daily life in the Roman Empire’s favorite vacation resort.
Most poignant and dramatic, however, are the body casts of the volcano’s victims, frozen in their last moments: a couple in their final embrace, a man clutching a cloth to his mouth, a fleeing slave with his ankle manacle still in place, a dog struggling on its chain.
Visitors enter the exhibit gallery through a reconstruction of one of Pompeii’s main gates. It is perhaps August 22 in that fateful year. Through a series of smaller galleries, visitors learn about key businesses that supported Pompeii’s thriving economy and the religious beliefs, dining habits and home life of Pompeii’s residents.
Finally, visitors experience the darkening skies and the violent sounds of Vesuvius spewing its ash and debris onto the city. They look upon plaster casts of eight of the volcano’s victims, frozen in their last moments. Archeologists made these casts by pouring plaster into the cavities left in the thick volcanic materials after the trapped victims’ bodies decayed. Few other exhibits connect visitors in such an emotional and personal way with individuals who lived over 2000 years ago.
Learn More About Bonus Features of the Exploreum
Included with Exhibit Admission
Find out more about the IMAX film GREECE
Showing January 12 - June 3, 2007
