Ever since reading about ancient Roman/Greek civilization in classes throughout high school, I’ve been fascinated by the period.  One of the major events that helped shaped the period was the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.   Pompeii, Herculaneum and other cities around the Bay of Naples were completely wiped out in this one single event in 79AD.  Since the late 18^th century, excavations have taken place and given us a frozen picture of what life was like at the time of the explosion.

Currently, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is housing an exhibit of some of the items from these excavations until October 4^th.  With the admission fee of $25, you get the audio headset complimentary, as well as entry into rest of the museum’s current exhibits.  Also, you can take your ticket stub to the Getty Villa (which is designed to look like the Villa of Papyri from Herculaneum) to view their exhibits when you get there, instead of making the required advanced reservation.

Once you get a headset, you can proceed into the exhibit.  Inside there are a wide variety of artifacts to view from statues and jewelry to wall paintings and mosaics.  Some of the placards have numbers of which you can enter into your headset to hear more about the piece.  The information provided is very helpful as it points out finer details of pieces or additional information about what the item might have looked like or have been used for.   There are 5 main rooms with a few small off shoots of rooms to view with plenty of artifacts in each, and happily, some of them stand away from the wall so you can walk around and view the items from all sides.

The pieces on display are amazing, not only for the fact that they survived a volcanic explosion and all this time buried but also for the quality.  The paintings from the walls are still vibrantly colored and detailed.  Statues so life like that you could imagine the person walking around now.  They set up one room that has the paintings from wall on them, so you can sit and imagine eating dinner and socializing in that very room.  The very thought of all the time and energy the craftsmen put into making such works is staggering.

While there are none of the famous body casts of people dying, the exhibit overall provides a great view about how the wealthy lived in Pompeii.  It was a little hard in some places to look over the pieces as the headset was talking about them because of their location and the amount of other visitors in the exhibit.  The only other downside was the fact that the showcase including nothing about anything from outside the villas of the wealthy.  From the title of the exhibit “Pompeii and the Roman Villa”, I was hoping for a wider view of life at that period.  Although, it could be that the title is supposed to imply the wealthy-only view of the exhibit.

Overall, I’d give the exhibit a .  It was definitely worth the $25 fee and was glad to spend some time exploring the other buildings at LACMA.  I wish I had planned enough time to visit the Getty Villa but that can always be done in another trip.