SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—Professional LEGO builder Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught has crafted a model of Pompeii at the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum, according to The Conversation. The project, which took more than 500 hours to complete and used more than 190,000 blocks, is one of the largest LEGO historical models ever built. The display shows three phases of the ancient city: as it looked in A.D. 79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted; as it appeared when it was rediscovered in the eighteenth century; and as the ruins stand today. Over the past two years, McNaught created a scale model of the Colosseum out of the colorful bricks, and the LEGO Acropolis, now on display at the Acropolis Museum in Athens. To read about the conservation of Pompeii's most famous paintings, go to "Saving the Villa of the Mysteries."
LEGO Pompeii Excites New Audiences
News January 23, 2015
Recommended Articles
Letter from Australia November/December 2022
Murder Islands
The doomed voyage of a seventeenth-century merchant ship ended in mutiny and mayhem
Digs & Discoveries September/October 2022
Australia's Blue Period
Letter from Australia May/June 2021
Where the World Was Born
Newly discovered rock art panels depict how ancient Aboriginal ancestors envisioned climate change and creation
-
Features November/December 2014
The Neolithic Toolkit
How experimental archaeology is showing that Europe's first farmers were also its first carpenters
(Courtesy Rengert Elburg, Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen) -
Features November/December 2014
The Ongoing Saga of Sutton Hoo
A region long known as a burial place for Anglo-Saxon kings is now yielding a new look at the world they lived in
(© The Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource) -
Letter From Montana November/December 2014
The Buffalo Chasers
Vast expanses of grassland near the Rocky Mountains bear evidence of an extraordinary ancient buffalo hunting culture
(Maria Nieves Zedeño) -
Artifacts November/December 2014
Ancient Egyptian Ostracon
(Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, UCL, UC15946)