The Birmingham Museum of Art has opened a Pompeii exhibition that will be here until January '08.
http://www.pompeiibirmingham.com/
I am very much looking forward to seeing it, at least once. We were lucky enough to actually go to Pompeii while in Rome on a company sponsored trip in 1989. It was so interesting to see what they had uncovered! Also surreal when you're told the ruts in the cobblestones are from chariots, frescos on walls have lasted longer than you can wrap your mind around and just trying to imagine the streets and houses full of people of that time! My regret is that I didn't keep a diary because there are holes in my memory now! I did take pictures but not nearly enough! The ones I posted are of the work area where the finds are being readied for display. The first is a human figure, the second has a dog in a glass case that had been chained, another human figure and I'm not sure what's in the other glass case, and the third picture is a sacrificial altar which involved humans as well as animals. I'm hoping the trip to the museum will revive my memory about some things. It's hard to concentrate on what the tour guide is saying when you're trying to take in the surroundings!
If you use the sidebar at the museum's site you will find links with various pictures and interesting facts about Pompeii. And, if you search for Pompeii pictures there are also lots of links.
I might do a post about our trip to Rome. It was a couple of months after the Lockerbie explosion, which was on my mind BIG TIME!
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My wife and I went to Pompeii in December of 88. Very interesting trip. The entire city is like one big time capsule.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, the Lockerbie bombing happened the day my wife was flying over to Germany from the US. When she went back a couple weeks later, airport security was wicked tight. They were opening and hand searching every bag, carry-on and chacked alike. It took her a looong time to check in at the airport in Nuernberg.
We were there in early Feb '89! We almost crossed paths! It was a day trip for us--we drove down from Rome on a bus, stopped in Naples for lunch and spent the afternoon in Pompeii. I really enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteFlying over to Italy this huge Pan Am was almost empty except for the group that was going to Rome. That was the first time we'd seen so much security! Little did we know what the future held!
I've never been to Pompeii, but I toured the ruins of two Roman Empire cities, Leptis Magna and Sabratha, when I was stationed in Libya in the mid 1950s. At one of the ruins, Sabratha, John Wayne and Sophia Loren were filming a forgettable movie called "Legend of the lost". They shot one scene in which Sophia was in the old Roman bath washing bat guano off of jewels they had found, as I think I recall. They shot the scene twice, once for American theatres because films were subject to censorship at the time, and once for the rest of the world. For American viewers she wore clothing which left little to the imagination when it got soaked and then she emerged from the pool. The other scene they shot with her nude. If that didn't set some young airman's hormones to raging nothing ever would. :-)
ReplyDeleteSee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leptis_Magna and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabratha and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050629/
Oh. I neglected to say that about three of we airmen found "Duke" Wayne at the bar of the hotel he was staying at in Tripoli and he sat around and gabbed with us for several hours and picked up the tab for all of us. He had no makeup on and his face looked pock-marked, but he was still a most impressive figure of a man.
ReplyDeleteInteresting links, Don. I think I've heard of the movie but not sure if I've seen it. Loved John Wayne and Sophia was okay, too! ;) Hard to understand why she married that squat of a man, Carlo! Wayne was a one-of-a kind and he has a great looking son, Patrick Wayne. I was hoping to see him in more movies than I have.
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