Basic HTML Version
14
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
This week Blue Badge guide Sarah and I met up at
the British Museum to make ongoing preparations
for
The Ancients at Home
galleries tour that will
complement our visits to the block buster Pompeii
& Herculaneum Exhibition which runs at the British
Museum from 28 March to 2 September 2013.
In AD 79, Herculaneum and Pompeii on the Bay
of Naples were wiped out in just 24 hours by the
catastrophic eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius.
Like Brighton is to Hove, Margate to Whitstable,
Clacton to Frinton, Pompeii was the larger, noisier
town, full of bars and brothels. Herculaneum was
wealthier and quieter. These were not extraordinary
cities; the inhabitants died in an extraordinary way,
but these were ordinary Roman cities, and because
of this they have become a lens through which we
can see and understand a whole civilisation. In the
words of Museum Director, Neil MacGregor this
blockbuster exhibition will be a chance:
“to visit the cities and to visit the houses in the cities;
to be inside a Roman household, inside a Roman
street; to know what it felt like, to know what was
going on.”
And therein lies the theme of our day at the British
Museum – at home with the ancients. Here’s the
exhibition curator, Paul Roberts:
“
Daily life; the home, and domestic life, it’s
something that we all share. The home gives us a
wonderful opportunity to explore how people like us
lived in Roman times: perhaps they didn’t all go to the
baths, or the amphitheatre, but poor or wealthy they
all had a home. We can’t imagine the horror of that
day, but we can see what people did. Some of them
were practical, taking a lantern or a lamp to help
them stumble through the total darkness of the
volcanic blizzard. Other people took gold and silver in
the form of coins or jewellery. One little girl took her
charm bracelet with pieces from all over the Roman
world and beyond, such as cowries from the Indian
Ocean, amber from the Baltic, rock crystal from the
Alps, incense from Egypt. She had this with her when
she died on the beach at Herculaneum with hundreds
of others.”
2,000 years later that charm bracelet will be among
over 250 objects on display as well as an incredibly
well-preserved loaf of bread that “went in the oven in
AD 79 and came out in the 1930s”.
If you are would like to come to see the Pompeii
exhibition we are offering a beautifully crafted,
erudite and entertaining itinerary to make a day of it.
Your group will spend time together to buy morning
coffee, lunch and tea but will be split into two smaller
groups to visit the Pompeii exhibition and enjoy a
guided tour in the galleries. There are a staggering 13
acres of galleries at The British Museum and an awful
lot of stairs! Our
Ancients at Home
galleries tour is all
on one level, doesn’t involve a long walk and takes us
A Guide’s Eye View of Life at The British Museum