(sigh) It is not easy, is it? Just think that these voices once belonged to real people, like you and me!
Try and imagine the people of Herculaneum walking through the streets of the city, which you see here reconstructed in cork. It was made by the ingenious craftsman Raffaele Vitiello in 2013. Can you see the people? Some are stopping to say hello to friends, others are buying dried fruit and sausages for a mid-morning snack, buying stuff in shops or pulling water from the fountains…
But that young mother who just spoke to us, she lived in Pompeii. You know, the people of Pompeii suffered a different fate from the people of Herculaneum! They suffocated, then they were buried alive by a cloud of gas and fine ash.
When their bodies wasted away and left only their skeletons, there was an empty space inside the layers of hardened ash. It was like a mould of the dead person, with facial features and even folds of clothing… If you fill that empty space with liquid plaster, it can make a statue. A bit like the little shapes children use at the beach, you know?
The technique was a brilliant invention by the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli who made the first cast in 1863. Since then, they haven’t stopped and now there are loads of casts. When you look at them, you can imagine their suffering and feelings, and perhaps what the Pompeians were thinking in their last moments of life.
The inhabitants of Herculaneum, on the other hand, were killed by the heat, then they were covered by layers and layers of volcanic rubble… more than 20 metres thick! All that is left today is… their skeletons… and their stories.
But I have spoken enough. It is time to show you the city, travelling back in time to any day two millennia ago. I yield the floor to my fellow citizens: they will guide you from now on.