Those of you who live in Birmingham, Alabama (or nearby) have a unique opportunity. The Birmingham Museum of Art is currently featuring an exhibit of 500 works of art and artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the ancient Italian cities destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius in 79 AD.
To help visitors to the exhibit prepare, the curators have designed an impressive Pompeii Birmingham website. For those of us who can't go, the site is still quite impressive and worth browsing. If you're teaching a unit on Pompeii you'll find the site particularly useful. Students can read eyewitness accounts of Pliny the Younger and view actual artifacts from the show. see how the art from Pompeii has influenced modern interior designers. Teachers will especially like the printable lesson plans. and suggested reading lists.
