Agony and horror of Pompeii revealed in tiny details

A man on his back clenches his fists in agony while a small child perched on his knees rears up as boiling ash from Mount Vesuvius engulfs him; of all the casts taken of victims at Pompeii, this is perhaps the most shocking.

“We don’t know if this man was really clenching his fists or if the searing heat tightened his muscles as he died — either way it’s horrific,” said the archaeologist Silvia Bertesago.

Pompeii honoured its dead by displaying the best preserved 22 of 100 casts taken

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The man and child are part of the first permanent exhibition of Pompeii’s casts, which were made by pouring plaster into the body shaped cavities created when the Roman city’s residents were buried in ash by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79. The ash hardened and the buried bodies all but rotted away, leaving only the bones, resulting in perfect moulds which give a snapshot of the agony Pompeiians endured at the end.

Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the Pompeii director, said at the opening of the exhibition at the site: “We want to tell the story of a tragedy that destroyed a city, the biggest natural disaster in antiquity, but also left us with an archaeological and historical treasure.”

Pompeii honoured its dead by displaying the best preserved 22 of 100 casts taken. Beyond a sign at the entrance asking visitors to “proceed with respect and in silence”, the show is packed with Pompeiians curled up, hunched, struggling to stand and writhing.

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Each body has a full description of where it was found, when and in what state. Visitors are told how traces of cloth found on a man sitting with his knees pulled up under his chin and his hands over his face mean he was probably covering his mouth with his cloak.

Bertesago said: “We are recounting in a scientific way, for the first time, what happened in those hours.” She said the most touching cast in the exhibit was a three-year-old child in a tunic, found in Pompeii’s House of the Golden Bracelet, whose lips are visibly swollen by the intense heat.

Near the child, a teenage boy has a cloak wrapped around him — in this case, due to the quality of the cast, its folds are clearly visible. Experts decided that a woman thought for years to be pregnant actually has bunched-up clothing on her stomach. One mould of a young man is so precise it shows the individual nails in his sandals.

A woman found lying on her side near a city gate in 1976 was surrounded by gold and silver rings, coins and a statuette of the god Isis she was trying to flee with. Another woman was found with plant material clinging to her legs, leading to speculation she was attempting to climb a tree.

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Archaeologists who perfected the art of pouring plaster into body-shaped cavities at Pompeii in the 19th century sometimes left the skeletons inside. This means that some of the casts in the exhibition have real skulls — covered by a thin layer of plaster depicting the features of their face.

As the eruption began, Vesuvius belched small pumice stones over Pompeii for 18 hours, giving many of the 20,000 residents time to flee. Others stayed indoors, only to be killed when the pumice was replaced by the asphyxiating ash. The remains of about 1,000 victims have been found.

Among the first to visit the exhibition was the archaeologist Tiziana Rocco, who said: “I have worked at Pompeii for more than 20 years and I will never get over the emotional impact of these casts, which depict pain and death.”