Houston Museum of Natural Science

The destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius is one of the most famous disasters in human history. One of the reasons that it has remained in the public mind for so long is that for two centuries archaeologists have carefully excavated the doomed city. The nature of the eruption and its fast-moving pyroclastic flow literally stopped time on one afternoon in 79 C.E. The new exhibit featuring artifacts from Pompeii at the Houston Museum of Natural Science brings the magnitude of the disaster home with a cunning combination of scholarly somberness and pure spectacle.

The exhibit is timed to give visitors a chance to experience the special effects. The first room features a brief video introduction about the eruption and the Roman world when it occurred. At the conclusion, wooden gates dramatically open to welcome visitors into a recreation of a rich Roman villa.

Though many of the items on display are indeed genuine Pompeiian artifacts, they are not all that dissimilar from items that appeared in the gladiator exhibit the museum hosted in 2017. This was near the height of the Roman empire and they were a center of cultural exportation, so this isn’t all that surprising.

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