Pompeii chariot stars in Rome exhibit probing ancient roots

A meticulously reconstructed Pompeii bridal chariot that eluded the ancient city's modern-day looters is a star of an ambitious new exhibition in Rome, which invites viewers to reflect on today's connections with classical Roman and Greek civilizations.

Shown for the first time to the public since it was discovered in 2021 under four meters of volcanic ash, the four-wheeled chariot features silver and bronze decorations, including of erotic scenes.

The chariot was found under the ruins of a villa just outside Pompeii, an excavation prompted by the discovery that artifact thieves were tunneling through the area in hopes of finding saleable ancient loot.

Wooden parts of the chariot, like the sideboards, didn't survive the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius that ended Pompeii's run as a thriving, enterprising Roman city. But to reconstruct what didn't survive of the chariot, experts used same the pioneering technique that have been employed for decades now to make casts of human victims of the eruption, by filling in the space left in the ash by the vanished organic matter.

In a sobering reminder how life can vanish in an instant, as reflected in the show's title "The instant and eternity, between us and the ancients," the casts of two male victims, one of the pair is believed to have been the enslaved person of the other man, were transported to Rome from Pompeii's archaeological park to greet visitors at the exhibition's entrance.

But the chariot is just one of many stellar pieces in the exhibition, which opened yesterday for a three-month run in the towering, cavernous halls of the Baths of Diocletian, a structure in central Rome that dates to about A.D. 300 and now is home to the National Roman Museum just across from Rome's...