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- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 13
- Latest publication
- Sep 26, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 16, 2026
Latest issues
At Two in the Afternoon, Pompeii Went to the Baths (opens the original)
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The Roman bath was a gym, spa, swimming pool, meeting place, gossip mill, and somewhere to get clean. In Pompeii, an ordinary afternoon at the baths brings us remarkably close to daily life in first century AD Italy.At around the eighth Roman hour, or roughly two o’clock in the afternoon, the working day was beginning to wind down. Shops and workshops had been open since early light. Clients had made their morning calls at the salutatio, magistrates had made their appearances on the curio steps,
How one female archaeologist changed how we see Pompeii (opens the original)
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Archaeologist Wilhelmina Jashemski (1910-2007) transformed our impression of the landscape of Pompeii by looking beyond its houses, temples, and streets to the green spaces growing between them. Her work revealed a greener, more productive city, and laid the foundations for a new understanding of how Pompeians lived, worked, and responded to disaster.This article is an exclusive pre-release for my valued subscribers, ahead of its forthcoming publication in Adventuress Archaeology.One evening in
Who creates our image of a city? ‘Views’ of the Folios of Francesco Panini and Jean Barbault. (opens the original)
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I am standing in one of the upstairs rooms at Shapero Rare Books on New Bond Street, natural light pouring in around two large folio volumes resting on cushions before me. Carefully turning the pages of Francesco Panini’s book, I stop at a most familiar view. It is Piazza del Popolo, the ‘Piazza of the People’ located at the northern edge of Rome’s historic centre, just
Give us Pompeii, our daily bread (opens the original)
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Cars beep, the tram dings, and a moped flashes past, its rider shouting at a man in rags who is slowly crossing the road, an old bag on wheels dragging solemnly behind him. Beneath my feet is the detritus of life on the outskirts of Rome, far from the glamour of the ancient centre: broken bottles, crack pipes, dirty clothes.The edges of cities have always been like this: dirty, liminal places where the poor and the excluded are squeezed into the gaps. In ancient Rome, this was also the place whe
What Could You Buy in Pompeii? Inside Its Shops and Workshops (opens the original)
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Pompeii’s fast-food counters are famous. More than eighty thermopolia have been identified across the city, their masonry counters and sunken ceramic jars instantly recognisable to the modern visitor.But where could a Pompeian buy a bracelet? Have a cloak cleaned? Replace a broken tool? Choose a perfume? Who sold furniture, cloth, fruit, wine, or shoes, and where did all of these people actually work?The answer is scattered all over the city, in shopfronts, workshops, houses, temporary stalls, a
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