Life and Death – The Glorious Pompeii

By Khatia Bzhalava

Thursday, June 17

The Ambassador of Italy to Georgia, Enrico Valvo visited the renewed Vani Archeological Museum. The ambassador was hosted by the director of the museum, David Lortkipanidze.

The exhibition will be hosted at the museum in Vani, a historical town introduced to the international communities as ‘Georgia's Pompeii’.

The Treasure of Pompeii to be displayed in Vani Archeological Museum

In July-August 2021, the treasure of Pompeii will be on display at the Vani Archaeological Museum. The exhibition – Life and Death – The Glorious Pompeii will be organized by the Georgian National Museum and the Italian Embassy in Georgia. For the first time in Georgia, this exhibition will present the history of Pompeii, the glorious ancient Roman city buried in ash as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 A.D. Pompeii, as a well-preserved city, has become one of the main sources for the study of ancient culture since its discovery in 1748.

Life and Death – The Glorious Pompeii will be the first non-permanent exhibition hosted by the renovated Vani Archeological Museum, which was completed in 2020 after a 10-year remodeling. Visitors will be able to explore a variety of archaeological materials from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.

The wide range of the artifacts will illustrate the magnificent past of the city and the features of the wealthy Roman lifestyle. Famous paintings of Pompeii, frescos, miniature marble statues that adorned the gardens of Pompeii’s luxury villas, subtle glass crockery, bronze statues of Roman pantheon gods and mythological characters from larariums (household shrines), a variety of household items such as pottery, silver and bronze cutlery, golden jewelry, and other luxury items are among the objects on display in the museum. The exhibits will also include petrified dogs and humans covered in ash, as well as the famous embracing Pompeii couple symbolizing the tragic end of the ancient city.

It is symbolic that the museum in Vani, a historical town introduced to the international communities of archaeology and history as "Georgia's Pompeii" – is the venue to host Life and Death. Vani une Pompe?i ge?orgienne is the name of David Lordkipanidze’s book, published in 1995 in France. Vani, which was the main religious center of the Kingdom of Colchis in the VIII-I centuries BC was also severely destroyed by the enemy. Today, viewing the ruins of a Vani temple-city allows you to travel back in time, and the archaeological artifacts displayed at the Vani museum will, for the most part, bring the magnificent past of these two remarkable cities to life.

The exhibition is the result of collaboration between the Georgian and Italian institutions. In 2017-2019, organized by the Georgian National Museum and the Embassy of Italy in Georgia, the National Gallery featured the masterpieces of the most important artists of Italian Renaissance and Baroque, modernism and postmodernism, including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Sandro Botticelli, Titian Vecellio, Raphael Sanzio, Lorenzo Bernini, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Giorgio de Chirico and others.

The exhibition is supported by TBC Bank, Business and Technology University (BTU), and Tsinandali Estate.