New things at Pompeii

People tend to romanticise their first visit to Pompeii. It was always less crowded than their second and more houses were accessible than on their second. I certainly do anyway, with plenty of circimstantial embellishments (like the slightly leery old custodian, who offered to open up the wooden case that then -- it was 1973 -- covered the famous painting of the phallus weighing at the entrance to the House of the Vettii).

Some of this might be true. But in some ways anyone who comes to Pompeii today will have more to see not less.

Pride of place must go to the wall paintings from the Roman 'hotel' discovered at Moregine near Pompeii in the late 1950s.

It's called a 'hotel' because it has five identically planned, large and in parts beautifully painted dining rooms, which suggest some kind of commercial entertainment purpose. There were all kinds of finds, including a load of commerical records of a banking family by the name of 'the Sulpicii' from Puteoli, who presumably owned the place, and which are still being deciphered an intepreted.  But it was the paintings (showing Muses etc, as you see here) that captured the imagination. Never been on permanent display before, they have now found a very good home in one ofthe colonnades of the so-called 'palaestra' (?exercise ground) of Pompeii, just near the amphitheatre. It's an excellent use of some pretty vacant space.

And the other recent novelty is a display of some of the plaster casts of the victims in a new "Vesuvius shaped' structure put up in the middle of the arena. Maybe this will prove a bit more controversial, but it is putting these extrordinary objects into the limelight again.