THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015 SECTION T ON ON1

OLD SCHOOL COMFORT FOODSlow down, pull out the crock pot and make these beans, T5

POMPEII, ITALY—The story of how the eruption of MountVesuvius in 79 AD buried Pompeii and its inhabitantsin ash is already familiar to many.

An exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum — Pom-peii: In the Shadow of the Volcano, open till Jan. 3 — isrenewing interest in this ancient tragedy.

A movie of the same name, released last year andstarring Kit Harington and Kiefer Sutherland, hasalso piqued public curiosity.

The truth, however, is neither can match the revela-tory experience of visiting the UNESCO World Heri-tage Site, located near Naples.

While Pompeii may not hold enough allure to war-rant a special trip to Italy, it is definitely worth a daytrip from Rome. There are 34 direct trains daily fromRome to Central Station in Naples. From there, hopon the regional Circumvesuviana train and get off atthe Pompeii Scavi station.

You will be steps away from the site’s entrance.Follow the same route if you are docking at Naples ona Mediterranean cruise.

If you are visiting the Amalfi coast, it is just a 30-minute train ride from Sorrento.

The Temple of Apollo in Pompeii features a bronze statue of the god standing in front of the porticos.SOPRINTENDENZA SPECIALE PER POMPEI PHOTOS

Visiting Pompeii a revelatory experience

Royal Ontario Museumputs on a good show, but nothing matches a visit to the actual siteLESLIE YIPSPECIAL TO THE STAR

POMPEII continued on T2

Do you paint the walls of your home? ThePompeiians did and in grand style. Many houses hadentire rooms decorated with art on the wall.

LONDON—People are horrible. It’s hard to escape thisthought amid the guns, knives, bombs, knuckle-dust-ers and vials of poison in the Museum of London’snew exhibition, The Crime Museum Uncovered.

Drawn from Scotland Yard’s private collection, theshow charts more than a century of violence andsuffering, from the murders of Jack the Ripper to IRAand Al Qaeda bombings.

But it also celebrates the brains, bravery and scien-tific advances that helped catch perpetrators andsolve crimes.

Co-curator Jackie Keily said some people will findthe displays “deeply upsetting or unsettling.”

“However, for all the bad we see in crime, there’s alsothe good,” she said.

Macabre relics await at the London museumScotland Yard collection rife with tales of murder,mayhem, detective work isn’t for the faint of heart

JILL LAWLESSTHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Crime MuseumUncovered boastsan exhibition ofartifacts spanningmore than a century ofviolence andmorbid acts in the U.K., fromJack the Ripper toIRA bombings.

ALASTAIR GRANT/THE ASSOCIATED PRESSCRIME continued on T2

T2⎮TORONTO STAR THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2015 ON ON1

>>TRAVEL

What to seeTemple of ApolloThe first substantial structure yousee upon entering from Porta Mari-na is the Temple of Apollo, with abronze statue of the god standing infront of the porticos. The sun godwas one of the most important godsfor ancient Pompeians. Behind theTemple of Apollo, you will find theTemple of Jupiter and facing it is theTemple of Venus. Add the Tower ofMercury to the right and you willfind our solar system pretty well-re-presented.

The Lupanar (Brothel)Perhaps the most visited buildingamong the ruins, it is, ironically, situ-ated just one block behind the im-posing religious temples of the fo-rum. There are 10 small rooms, eachwith a stone bed. Paintings of eroticscenes adorn the walls. Love and sexwere not considered taboo subjectsin Pompeii and many ordinary hous-es had rooms that were decoratedwith erotic frescoes. Phallic symbolswere also used to adorn householditems, such as lamps. Some of theseartifacts can be seen in the Sex in theCity section at the ROM exhibition.

The House of the FaunThis expansive villa is named afterthe bronze statue of a dancing faunfound at the entrance’s fountain.Bronze statues from Roman timesare rare commodities these days be-cause many were melted down forthe precious metal. Such was not thecase in Pompeii, as the ash and pum-ice that buried the town kept thebronze sculptures safe until archeol-ogists began their systemic excava-tion in the late 18th century.

Villa dei MisteriDo you paint the walls of your home?The Pompeians did and in grandstyle. You may not realize this fromthe framed fresco paintings at themuseum, but many houses in Pom-peii had entire rooms decorated withpaintings on the wall. The newly re-stored Villa dei Misteri, reopenedthis spring, is one of the best ex-amples with a 17-metre-long andthree-metre-high fresco depictingno less than 28 life-size figures in 10different scenes.

Via dell’AbbondanzaThe Road of Abundance. This wasthe central shopping boulevard forthe town. The street is lined on bothsides by bakers, tailors, potters, gold-smiths, blacksmiths and more. It isone thing to see the tools of trade in amuseum exhibition, and a totally dif-ferent experience to walk down thestreet where these stores did briskbusiness 2,000 years ago.

AmphitheatreThe literal translation of amphith-eatre is “the space for the spectatorsthat runs all around the arena.” ThePompeian Amphitheatre is the old-est of all existing buildings of its kind.Seating 20,000 people in three tiers,

it could have accommodated everysingle resident of the town. Fromtime to time, concerts are still heldhere. Arguably, the most classic per-formance of recent time was the con-cert film Pink Floyd: Live in Pompeii,shot over four days in October 1971.

Archaeological Museum of NaplesVisiting the archeological site inPompeii is the only way one can trulyappreciate the remarkable story.However, as with any historical site,precious artifacts must be removedfor their security. Most of the trea-sures are now housed in the Archae-ological Museum of Naples, includ-ing the colourful mosaic of Alexan-der the Great from the House ofFaun. There are also many beautifulsmaller household items, offeringyou an even greater insight into thelife of a Roman town in 79 AD. Themany framed frescoes make you feelas though you are in an art gallery. Hours: 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. (closedTuesdays). Tickets and info at:cir.campania.beniculturali.it.

Practical TipsAvoid the morning rush

Most organized tours, especiallythose servicing cruise passengersfrom Naples, tend to arrive between10 a.m. and 11 a.m., and the queues atthe ticket booths can get annoyinglylong.

Once inside, these slow-movinggroups will crowd around all majorpoints of interest. Go earlier — thesite opens at 8:30 a.m. year round —or after an early lunch at 1 p.m. Thesite closes at 7:30 p.m. in the summerthrough early fall (till Oct. 31) and at 5p.m. in the winter months. Unlessyou are a history buff, a three-hourvisit should suffice.

Do you need a guide?As you approach the entrance, tourguides will offer their services. Twohours with a licensed guide costs be-tween €75 and €100 ($110-$147 Cana-dian) and you can split the costamong fellow travellers. For largergroups, this is probably the best op-tion. The guides are generally quiteknowledgeable and have beenknown to throw in a few stories oftheir own to make your visit moreinteresting.

For those who prefer a more in-dependent experience, an audioguide can be rented for €5 ($7). Make

sure you get the corresponding mapas each stop is numbered accordingto that map.

A number of iPhone apps are alsoavailable. Pompeii — A Day in thePast ($3.49) has seven itinerariesranging from two hours to a full day.The routes, maps, photos and audioguide are all available offline too.

Your €13 ($19) entrance fee comeswith a free map and brief guide. Youcan download them anytime fromthe official site.

Website: Pompeiisite.org. Pompeii: In the Shadow of the Volcanoruns until Jan. 3 at the Royal OntarioMuseum. Tickets and info at rom.on.ca.

Enjoy a stroll along road of abundancePOMPEII from T1

Mount Vesuvius, still an active volcano, makes a looming backdrop for the Forum of Pompeii.

Via dell’Abbondanza, or the Road of Abundance, used to be the centralshopping boulevard for the town of Pompeii.

SOPRINTENDENZA SPECIALE PER POMPEI PHOTOS

“There are people who go out thereand investigate, who doggedly followdown the leads.”

The exhibition, which opens Friday,is the first public outing for the con-tents of the private Metropolitan Po-lice crime museum, founded in 1875as an educational tool for officers.

“It’s a nice controlled environmentwhere they can look at murderscenes,” said police museum curatorPaul Bickley, a former Scotland Yarddetective.

“They can look at investigationtechniques without the rawness ofsuddenly being the first officer onscene . . . thinking ‘Oh my God, whatshould I do?’ ” he said.

The collection is a trove of macabremementoes that ranges from theworking tools of violin-playing 19th-century cat burglar — he performedin the homes of the wealthy beforereturning to rob them — to a hang-man’s “execution box” containingropes, sandbags and restrainingstraps.

In the first rooms, visitors are metby 19th-century plaster death masksand a row of executioner’s nooses. It’snot for the faint-hearted and cura-tors spent many hours debatingwhat to include and what to leaveout.

The cases covered in detail stop in1975 — any later, it was felt, might betoo close to home for victims or theirfamilies.

The displays cover famous crimes

and criminals, including LondonEast End gangster brothers Reggieand Ronnie Kray and 1940s serialkiller John Haigh, the “Acid BathMurderer,” who was convicted afterdetectives retrieved the gallstones ofa victim — all that was left of her —from a vat of sulphuric acid.

Other cases brought new detectingtechniques, from fingerprinting toforensics. Still others triggeredchanges in the justice system.

Capital punishment was abolishedin Britain in the 1960s, in part be-cause of events such as the executionof Ruth Ellis, who was hanged in 1955for shooting her abusive lover out-side a London pub.

The Smith & Wesson .38 Ellis usedis on display, one among a vast arrayof lethal implements. There’s a mor-

tar shell fired by the IRA at 10 Down-ing St. in 1991 while prime ministerJohn Major was holding a cabinetmeeting, a rocket launcher used byIRA dissidents to attack spy head-quarters in 2000 and a pair of binoc-ulars with spring-loaded spikes inthe eye pieces, given by a jilted manto his ex-fiancée.

But for Kiely, the most powerfulitems are the most ordinary, such as aknife a London man used to kill hiswife, Emily Barrow, in 1902.

“I had just seen that as a knife in ashelf full of weapons in the CrimeMuseum,” Keily said. “And then youread about it and you suddenly think,this is a story that could happen atany time, anywhere. It’s the kind ofstory we read about every morningin the papers, sadly.”

Vast array of lethal instruments cover famous capers and criminalsCRIME from T1

Pills and poisons from a doctor’s case. Real guns and reproductions used in felonies sit behind a glass encasing.ALASTAIR GRANT PHOTOS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A sticker on this travelling execution box shows it was used in 1959.