It's a story that keeps on giving, a violent event that can be pinpointed and imagined almost down to the hour.
The mammoth volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii almost 2000 years ago will be the subject of the next summer blockbuster at the National Museum of Australia.
A collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in Italy and the Grand Palais in France, this will be the first time the exhibition will be shown in Australia and the southern hemisphere.
The show will bring the streets of ancient Pompeii back to life with a massive immersive, multi-sensory experience, including the recreation of the catastrophic eruption that destroyed the famous city in 79CE.
There will be more than 90 rare objects from the site, including jewellery, household items, much-used cookware, frescoes, dice, a pair of tweezers and even a piece of bread.
The show will also include resin casts of victims captured in their final, traumatic moments.
Opening in December, Pompeii will come hot on the heels of the museum's most successful show in its history, Discovering Ancient Egypt, which closed on Sunday, September 8 and saw more than 200,000 visitors.
It was one of three major exhibitions in Australia featuring ancient Egypt, and followed blockbusters on Rome and Greece, showing our insatiable appetite for objects from the ancient world.
National Museum curator Lily Withycombe, who travelled to Pompeii to hand-pick items for the Canberra display, said the objects would serve as a poignant reminder of everyday life shattered almost from one moment to the next.
"What we want to do is recreate this sense of lived experience," she said.
"The kind of bowls that people ate from, and plates and ... really well-loved and well-used pieces of cookware that were clearly used. We're even getting a piece of bread, which speaks so beautifully to the point that life was continuing on the day and up to the day."
She said one of the most intriguing things about Pompeii was that new discoveries were still being made; as recently as last month, human remains were discovered in poses that suggested they did not die a quick and instantaneous death.
"What's interesting is that some of the most recent archaeological work has suggested that our current understanding of the date is actually different, and perhaps the eruption takes place at a different point in time - that's something that's explored in our exhibition," she said.
"I think the amazing thing about Pompeii is that just when you think you know everything, it could be turned on its head with new discoveries."
Some of the items on display were only discovered in the last six years, giving the exhibition an archaeological feel that sets it apart from others.
She said some of the things on display - including the immersive 3D projections - might be confronting, particularly the resin casts of humans.
"We're really conscious that these show people in their final moments and the final moments of this really tragic, quite extraordinary but very frightening event," she said.
- Pompeii opens at the National Museum of Australia December 13 and runs until May 4. nma.gov.au
