Notes from Pompeii
Dr Dacia Viejo Rose
July 2026
Nothing quite prepares you for the experience of visiting Pompeii. Not the books, nor the articles, not the photos nor the films, not how impressive everyone has told you it is; not even the 3D and VR immersive exhibitions that have been touring theworld recently. Why is that?
On a sweltering Friday in the middle of June my daughter (11) and I took a bus from Naples to Pompeii where we were met by Dr Valeria Amoretti, Head of the Applied Research Lab of the archaeological site, and as an anthropologist trained in forensics, the person responsible for caring for the human remains found, and yet to be found there. We entered by the Gladiators Barracks and the Large Theatre. Having visited Roman theatres before and the Colosseum in Rome though, and with infrastructure in place for a performance that evening, our first impression was one of tourist groups and waves of heat emanating from the stones.
Yet as we kept walking, clinging to what few scraps of shade we could find and hopping across stepping stones, a sense of awe began to to germinate at the Forum with its empty pedestals, and the long vistas of streets with their multiple houses and shops. As Valeria pointed here – the mosaic of a guard dog at the entrance to a home – and there – a large vat in a store from which a seller might have doled out heaps of olives – what we were seeing became more legible. Then Valeria and her team opened the doors to the collections of objects in their labs. Here the urban structures came to life through the everyday objects made poignant by their familiar shapes: a pile of cutlery, a writing implement remarkably similar in shape to an Apple pencil, a doctor’s bag with tweezers, scalpels and small vials. Though the unfamiliar was also memorable – a terracotta pot for keeping, fattening, and then cooking dormice (glirarium) left its mark on our imaginations.
Chiara Comegna, the site’s archaeobotanist, uncovered for us the collections she works with: the distinctive Pompeiian bread with its ready to tear and share segments, lentils, figs, the fishy remains found at the bottom of garum jars, the seeds of plants that once grew in Pompeii’s gardens being used to inform planting on the site today. Returning to the streets of Pompeii after that felt different, we seemed more connected to the city’s inhabitants through these markers of quotidian life. Then we went to the villa of Giulia Felice, my daughter’s favourite, with its frescos and ‘chill out’ room.
From there, we moved to the Large Palaestra and the exhibition recently inaugurated there dedicated to the casts, Fiorelli’s casts, and the more recent ones. While we had seen photos and replicas of these casts, these do not capture their physical presence: the emotional power of the gestures, of the stitching details on textiles, the shoe leather, and also the bones and teeth visible through the plaster. Here were the people who had inhabited those spaces, painted those frescoes, ate those olives, filled the city with sound, and in their final hours had shouted, run, looked for shelter, and hugged. The display of these human remains, each with their individual life and death enclosed in a glass case poses infinite dilemmas to those who care for them: to show or not to show, what to show, how far to prod, where do scientific curiosity for knowledge and respect meet, where does one outweigh the other.
We left the exhibition somewhat muted and walked through the Necropoli of Nocera. Here we paused for a long time in the lengthening evening shadows of the Garden of the Fugitives, watching as birds flittered from one garden wall to another over the vineyard, mainly sparrows and then the colourful flash of a Hoopoe. The feel of the warm stones against our backs, the sent of the evening breeze and the vines, the sound of birdsong as we stood in the garden knowing that the city of Pompeii was at our backs brought it all the more to life. Valeria and I discussed the constant ethical dilemmas that she has to manoeuvre through balancing care and education, respect and research when my daughter quipped: “Mom, I wish we lived here, in the old Pompeii I mean”. And just like that Pompeii became part of our heritage too, not because scholars say it is but because we had felt it through all of our senses.
Thank you Valeria, Chiara, and the team at Pompeii!
