campusreview. com. au
NEWS
Pompeii, block by block
The city famously destroyed by volcano is now a Lego re-creation and a popular learning tool.
The doomed city of Pompeii has been unveiled by the University of Sydney as its latest in a series of historic scene re-creations constructed entirely from Lego building blocks.
A model of the city famously destroyed by the eruption of nearby Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD has been painstakingly pieced together over 500 hours with about 190,000 blocks by Lego certified professional Ryan McNaught.
Whilst not meant to be an accurate scale representation, the model was researched and planned under the guidance of the university’ s Nicholson Museum curator, Craig Barker, and is intended to depict several centuries of the city’ s history, including its more recent evolution in pop culture.
In doing so, Barker says, it is hoped the scenes included in the work – which measures 2.4m X 1.8m – will serve as a conversation starter for students studying the famous city.
“ It is a great toy to help break it up and really get them to think about the past in a different way,” Barker said.“ We can talk about the legacy of objects or sites from the past and also the concepts of curation, storytelling and history and all those other bigger-picture questions.”
Amongst the pop culture-inspired sections depicted in the newest work are scenes from TV series such as Dr Who and The Last Days of Pompeii, as well as a scene depicting a 1972 performance by rock band Pink Floyd in Pompeii’ s amphitheatre.
The museum has previously featured Lego re-creations of ancient Rome’ s famous Colosseum and the Acropolis of ancient Greece.
“ It means we can do the more generalised fun-based teaching with younger students whilst with Year 11 and Year 12 HSC history students we can burrow right in and look at some precise details,” Barker said.“ Aspects of Roman life before the eruption – all re-created out of Lego but also aspects of the excavation of the site over the past two centuries – so that [ we have ] development of archaeological theory and methodology and the changing perceptions of Roman culture.
Barker said the university had been inundated with queries from high school history teachers wanting to schedule visits and expected the model to be part of the university’ s course on Pompeii as well. ■
9