In a totally transformed exhibition area at the National Museum of Australia, director Katherine McMahon unveiled the new exhibition, Pompeii: Inside a Lost City, to assembled media on Thursday morning, a good way, she thought, of celebrating her first year at the helm.

On hand were Tiziana Rocco, from Parco Archaeologico di Pompei (PAP) and Laurent Dondey, from the Grand Palais in Paris, to talk of the model of co-operation and preservation that had seen this exhibition come to life as a very different experience from the digitally immersive show that premiered at the Grand Palais in 2020.

Mr Dondey described a process of “working so nicely together,” praising the adaptation the museum had made to the original show, which had focused on technology, now using real objects from Italy to “celebrate the beauty of Pompeii”.

As digital transformations and moving projections cast on to the walls around us, Lily Withycombe, lead co-ordinating curator for the NMA, described the process of installing the 90 objects brought to Canberra for the first time.

The central promenade area of the exhibit is like none other, laid out in the manner of a great hall in a wealthy household, while visible on the walls are the shadows of working 21st-century archaeologists, for Pompeii is still an active archaeological site with new discoveries being made all the time.

Withycombe said the exhibition paid respect to the “extraordinary lives” of the Pompeiians, but cautioned we should also pay careful attention to the humbler objects in the show, such as cooking pots or vessels with debris left in them from the explosion in 79CE.

It all proved, she said, that “ancient objects can link our past to our present”.

Before we disbanded to look more closely at the show, McMahon announced that she would allow the looming Mt Vesuvius to have the last word, then the on-screen volcano erupted and cast digital ash all around, causing us to duck for cover.

Pompeii: Inside a Lost City, National Museum of Australia, December 13-May 4.