Learn about the art, people and daily life of the amazing cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. 

Lecture 1 looks in detail at city life, home and private life, including news on recent discoveries. In the Roman world, wealth and status were all-important and your home reflected this.  We explore living and dining rooms, gardens kitchens and even the toilets.  We see beautiful sculptures, stunning mosaics and wall paintings, silverware, jewellery, glass and even wooden furniture miraculously preserved.  Finally, we come to the tragic end of the cities and their people - ordinary people just like us. 

Lecture 2.   Before lunch, we focus on the Roman love affair with food and drink.  For the Romans, life meant getting together to eat and drink, in a pub or at a banquet.  This talk, based on the 2019-2020 exhibition Last supper in Pompeii at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, takes us from fields and vineyards to markets and shops, from tables to toilets and even the tomb.  Recent discoveries here too.