I did a paper and presentation in Art History about Alexander the Great, especially the famous Alexander Mosaic that once graced the floor in the House of Faun in Pompeii. Today, the original rests in the Archaeological Museum in Naples, which we got visit this summer with Mirabile Inventu!In doing research for this project, I found a website that records the process of creating a copy of this mosaic for display. The steps that this team went through and the intricacy and tediousness of their work is amazing. At this Reconstruction Website they show pictures of each step of the process.
If I had to deal with that many little stones I just know I'd poke my eyes out after just one day. I thought mossaicing my bathroom floor was a nightmare, this one took about 500,000 tessarae. Kill me now.
Pompeii was the ancient city that was covered lava from Mt. Vesuvius before anyone could escape. Looking at the unearthed columns, temples, theater, and basically the whole city, was so cool. Our tour guide Roberto was also pretty cool, heh heh. Naples, the only thing we saw there was the architecture museum where they carted all the goodies they dug up at Herculaneum and Pompeii. These two Italian cities were gorgeous.