AN APPLIANCE that heats or cools drinks using either coal or snow, a boiler that warms bathwater and an underfloor heating system: these may sound like inventions for the modern dwelling – but the Romans got there first.
While some 2,000 years separate us from Roman civilisation, a recreated first-century Roman villa from Pompeii has these technological innovations and more, as well as sophisticated art.
More than 200 treasures and artefacts are on loan to the Musée Maillol in Paris in a Franco-Italian collaboration that highlights the risk to the future of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
A few months ago, a major building in Pompeii collapsed and the site in Italy is so short of funds that Unesco may remove its world heritage status.
The work on loan includes frescoes and marble sculptures that might have been found in a dining room, kitchen and bathroom, among other rooms in the home of a landowner, magistrate or merchant.
But it is the everyday objects that bring it to life: after-bath scrapers and vials of perfumed oils for the hair, clothes and feet suggest that someone was getting ready for their guests; delicate silver cups, bronze skewers and spoons – along with kitchen utensils – hint at a sumptuous meal to come. It gives a sense that the owner has just popped out.
The reconstruction is significant as few private houses have survived from the Roman empire. And the objects are designs of real “luxury”, according to Stefano De Caro, the honorary director general of Italy’s archaeological heritage and one of the exhibition organisers.
Pompeii – A Way of Life opens tomorrow at the Musée Maillol and runs until February 12th next year. – (Guardianservice)