No matter how many films you’ve seen about Pompeii, you will never feel the heat of the lava, battle to stay on your feet against the moving earth or see the ash cloud blot out the sun as Mount Vesuvius erupts.
But a new immersive experience, The Last Days of Pompeii, turns ExCel London into the famous Lost City, letting visitors step back in time before the disaster struck, killing 2,000 Romans.
The exhibition isn’t just entertainment – from marble statues, armour and frescoes – it offers a haunting yet eye-opening glimpse into the lives frozen by Mount Vesuvius, nearly 2,000 years ago.
Each display tells the story of the once vibrant city, filled with incredible architecture and paintings, that was destroyed by an unavoidable force.
The second room is almost heartbreaking and moving, with 3D-printed replicas of ash-cast citizens frozen in their death throes in every corner.
These replicas mirror the work of Giuseppe Fiorelli, the most influential director of the Pompeii excavations, who pioneered a revolutionary technique for recovering the bodies trapped in time.
In February 1863, he developed the method of making plaster casts from the hollow spaces left in the hardened ash after the victims’ bodies had decomposed.
By pouring plaster into this mould, Fiorelli captured the emotional final postures and expressions of the men, women and children who perished in the eruption.
The replicas in the London exhibition show a hand raised in defence, a body in a crawling stance as if trying to escape from the oncoming lava, and one on their knees, accepting their fate and desperately covering their eyes.
A seated VR experience places you inside the Roman amphitheatre, where you witness an intense gladiator battle right in front of you, before tragedy strikes and burns the city, leaving nothing but burnt destruction.
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The VR ends with you in the sky, looking down on the lava-filled streets of Pompeii with no signs of life – it’s so realistic it even gave me a bit of vertigo!
A 360-degree projection room puts you right in the heart of Pompeii, showing you daily life before the eruption and the eventual destruction.
It’s somewhat trippy as your mind is tricked into believing you’re really there with geckos crawling on the floor that you can stomp on – only to realise it’s all a projection.
After experiencing the eruption, you are moved to an archaeological room where you can pretend to dig for artefacts, just like archaeologists did all those years ago.
Then you are transported into a VR metaverse where you wander the Villa of Mysteries looking at its stunning frescoed rooms, decadent gardens and mosaicked bathhouses.
To top it all off, an AI photobooth transforms guests into ancient patricians – expect to get amusingly turned into a brave gladiator or a scheming Roman noblewoman.
The 16-week event opens tomorrow and lasts approximately 90 minutes at Immerse LDN in Excel Waterfront, London.
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