60s slides of Hercu­laneum

When clear­ing out my grand­par­ents’ house a couple of years ago I found seven pack­ets of these 60s tour­ist slides of vari­ous places around the Medi­ter­ranean. I’ve been scan­ning and restor­ing them. First up, these from Hercu­laneum.

Hercu­laneum is a smal­ler coastal town near Pompeii that was also destroyed by the volcano. It’s not as well known, but there are some magni­fi­cent villas there in a simil­ar but smal­ler archae­olo­gic­al park to the one you can visit at Pompeii.

Fish­bourne Palace

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A while back I went to Fish­bourne Palace. In the 1960s engin­eers digging a new drain in a village just outside Chichester discovered some Roman mosa­ics. When they were excav­ated, they turned out to belong to the one of the largest Roman palaces outside Italy. My thing I wrote for Story­board this month is based on it (and yes, the build­ing really does look like a swim­ming pool). No one is one hundred percent sure who it belonged to, the most common guess is Tiberi­us Claudi­us Cogidub­nus, the local chief­tain /​ Roman ally /​ client king, but there are no inscrip­tions or histor­ic­al records either back­ing it up or prov­ing other­wise.

Margate Shell Grotto

Earli­er in the summer I went to the Margate Shell Grotto with my mum. I thought it was a piece of victori­an tour­ist kitsch from memory, but it wasn’t like that at all.

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