“Another wonder, I’d have to say, is how “up close and personal” we were allowed to get with many of the things on show. You can actually walk on painstakingly executed mosaic floors, and touch two-thousand-year-old frescoes that while understandably a bit worse for wear, nevertheless show what an amazingly resilient technique this wall decoration-cum-art really is.
But while all that is truly extraordinary, I couldn’t help but also feel a bit like a modern-day Barbarian, one of countless others from all around the world who have “trodden on” things here so precious and rare, with little or no understanding of who made them, how they were constructed, or what symbolic meaning they might contain.”