There are many exhibitions with pieces from ancient Rome, but the one that opens its doors tomorrow in the Royal Shipyards of Barcelona is not one more. It is the great exhibition on Rome, because the best preserved Pompeian art has been added a plus: an amazing virtual journey through the last day of Pompeii in the year 79 of our era.
The last gladiator, which will remain on the bill until October 15, includes technology that allows you to walk through the streets of Pompeii and meet its inhabitants. It is enough for the visitor to put on special glasses and start walking. The first stop is a bit scary. That one of the circus dungeons. The prisoners are locked in their cells and tell their experience.
The feeling is claustrophobic, but immediately a Praetorian guard appears ready to help. His indications allow you to open a door that leads to the outside, although it is not easy to reach the top because you have to walk through some wooden planks that seem unreliable and that, if broken, would lead to the abyss.
Having overcome that obstacle, there is light. The visitor is seen in one of the streets of the city on a very specific day, October 24, 1979. The day Pompeii disappeared, buried by the lava of Vesuvius. But for now all is quiet. Traders display their wares on this central street. One sells ceramic containers for wine or oil, the other, fabrics of precious colors...
Suddenly there is an invitation to return to the underground and enter a semi-subterranean room where two gladiators have a sword fight. An opportunity to learn about the weapons that were used at the time, how these supermen lived and what they ate, who were something like the great stars of music today.
The tour leads through many other no less interesting corners until it ends in the very arena of the Roman circus, where gladiators fight with an elephant and one can almost understand what Maximus Decimus Meridius, the famous Gladiator from Ridley Scott's film, felt when he He faced his enemies.
The public cheers the artists who are fighting in the arena when, suddenly, Vesuvius, in the background, begins to spit ash and fire and there is a commotion in the stands, people run away in fear, screaming... It's the last day from Pompeii, which thanks to that tragic end is also the best preserved Roman site. The city was buried in the lava until 1592. Its discovery allowed us to see first-hand what the streets, clothing and utensils of the time were like.
Most of this archaeological treasure is kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and now a good sample of that collection has traveled to Barcelona for this exhibition curated by Beniamino Levi with the collaboration of Roberto Panté and Raffaele Lovine, who presented it this morning to the press of the Catalan capital.
The last gladiator has 150 pieces from sculptures, weapons, shields, spearheads, daggers, swords, mosaics, masks, marbles, vases, vessels, musical instruments... Everything you need to complete an amazing trip to the ancient past Rome.
