Pompeii Archaeological Park tells... the other Pompeii, the one of ordinary people

In the Palestra Grande of Pompeii Archaeological Park, the exhibition The Other Pompeii: Common Lives in the Shadow of Vesuvius, curated by Gabriel Zuchtriegel and Silvia Martina Bertesago, will open on December 15. Meanwhile, a small preview can be seen in the park: a reconstruction of a bunk, a bed of the simplest known type, found in the extra-urban villa of Civita Giuliana, in the “slave room.” The bed, composed of wooden planks and a net of cords and easily disassembled, was reconstructed using the cast technique (voids in the cinerite left by wood and fabric are filled with plaster) and is on display, until theopening of the exhibition, under the staircase (preserved as a trace in the wall) of a workshop on Via dell’Abbondanza (regio I, insula 6, civic number 12), next to the house of Achilles’ Lararium, where an ironworks with a backroom and living quarters on the second floor is speculated to have been located.

“What we see reflects the living conditions of 80 percent of the people who lived in Pompeii,” explains Park director and exhibition curator Gabriel Zuchtriegel, “while the atrium houses that we are used to considering characteristic of Roman domestic architecture actually represent a small minority. The exhibition aims to tell the story of this ’other’ Pompeii: the city of the middle and lower classes, artisans, shopkeepers, prostitutes, freedmen and slaves. The ordinary people who remained in the shadows of the great events of history, but whose lives in Pompeii can be uniquely reconstructed. This year, the cot, under the staircase of a Pompeian workshop, is our version of the Christmas crib, which Pope Francis says must speak to life: the space of the least where life is not taken for granted but a precious gift.”

“The bed is part of a room of only 16 square meters, in which three servants probably lived. The copy of the entire context, recreated thanks to the casts, as well as the reproduction of two other rooms of the House of Lararium, will be the centerpiece of the exhibition,” stresses exhibition co-curator Silvia Bertesago. “These rooms were the scene of real lives, lives of ordinary people, the true protagonists of the exhibition itinerary. In it, through seven sections and about three hundred exhibits, we will ideally follow the course of existence of those who belonged to the lower-middle social stratum, starting from birth until death and going through various aspects. Thanks to a system designed for the My Pompeii app, visitors will also be able to draw their own ancient identity, understanding how normal and easy it was to be one of the many ordinary people who inhabited an anonymous space, which can then be physically reached by following the directions provided by the app itself.”

The copy was made by digital scanning, 3d printer, FDM technique with excellent quality PLA material and finished by hand.

Pompeii Archaeological Park tells... the other Pompeii, the one of ordinary people

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