Review: The Last Days of Pompeii - The Immersive Exhibition

Photo: The Last Days of Pompeii

In 79 AD, the city of Pompeii was destroyed following the eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. A cloud of ash and toxic gases engulfed the city, killing nearly all of its 10,000+ inhabitants, and the volcanic debris that followed entombed their remains, preserving their final moments in a hardened cast of calcified ash. It's one of history's best-known disasters, and is now the focus of The Last Days of Pompeii, a new immersive exhibition, which has just begun a 16-week run at Immerse LDN in East London.

The show's producers, Madrid Artes Digitales, have had a near-constant presence in London over the past year, having previously launched Tutankhamun: The Immersive Exhibition at Immerse LDN and The Legend of the Titanic: The Ultimate Titanic Exhibition in Canada Water. This latest exhibition, which runs until 15th March 2026, sees them return to the same cavernous space in Immerse LDN that they took over for Tutankhamun and brings with it additional interactive elements not seen in other cities across Europe.

Using a mix of 360-degree immersive projections, virtual reality, and interactive screens alongside traditional, museum-like displays, The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition aims to transport visitors back nearly 2000 years to not only witness the destruction of the famed city but also learn more about the everyday lives of its inhabitants.

Photo: The Last Days of Pompeii

The opening rooms of The Last Days of Pompeii look a lot like any other museum exhibition. Large wall-mounted panels provide information and context about the day-to-day lives of those within Pompeii, detailing their morning routines, social activities and cultural offerings. Several display cases house fragments of marble sculptures, terracotta pots, swords and mural paintings alongside museum labels. While MAD's Tutankhamun exhibition was made up almost entirely of recreations, the items on display in The Last Days of Pompeii are genuine artefacts from the time, on loan from Barcelona's Galeria F. Cervera.

Further into the exhibition, the focus shifts to archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli, who in 1863 pioneered the technique of making plaster casts from the hollow space left in the hardened ash casings of the city's entombed residents. There are recreations of several plaster casts throughout the space, all frozen in time, and seeing them is a pretty moving experience, with their poses conveying the fear and terror of their final moments, despite not having any identifiable features.

In the next room is the first of two virtual reality scenes. With visitors wearing headsets while seated on swivel chairs, they're free to look around as they follow an unnamed gladiator into battle at Pompeii's amphitheatre. There's certainly some artistic licence on display during this 7-minute-long sequence, with a fight taking place in the centre of a full-blown, Rome-like colosseum, complete with retractable platforms that spit fire, animals appearing out of trap doors and a two-ship naval battle. It's all engaging and visually impressive, but it seems to be pretty far from the reality of what Pompeii's gladiator fighting was like, and it plays fast and loose with facts.

Photo: The Last Days of Pompeii/Set Vexy

The exhibition's main space, which offers 360-degree projections, lies behind a curtain following the VR section. In stark contrast to some of the small personal items on display in the exhibitions' earlier rooms, everything in this space is writ large. Standing 8 metres tall, the four walls and floor of the space display an ever-changing series of Instagram-worthy animations on a 26-minute loop. Much like in MAD's Tutankhamun exhibition, the projection room is by far the most impressive part of The Last Days of Pompeii and is the space visitors will likely spend most of their visit in.

Broken up into eight chapters, the projections shift from showing the day-to-day life of Pompeii's residents, relaxing in their villas and shopping in the market, to the first-hand testimony of the catastrophe by lawyer-cum-author Pliny the Younger. Other scenes show abstract premonitions of the impending disaster by a Wizard of Oz-like bronze faun statue and the eventual discovery of the city by Spanish explorer Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre.

While the highlight of this room are the two scenes depicting Vesuvius' eruption and the destruction of the city below, complete with a whirlwind of embers, ash, and lightning, along with chariot-sized chunks of molten lava smashing through buildings, we'd recommend staying in the space for a complete loop to get the full experience, as there are also moments that offer up quiet reflection. Regardless of the content, the scale of the room is pretty stunning and truly engulfs your vision, pulling you into the experience.

Photo: The Last Days of Pompeii

The exhibition's second VR experience sees visitors step into the metaverse as they explore several digital recreations of the Villa of the Mysteries, which owes its name to a series of frescoes depicting rituals associated with a secret society dedicated to the worship of Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy and theatre.

Visitors move freely through each room as it transforms from a derelict ruin to how it would have existed back in 79 AD. While the real-life Villa is one of Pompeii's must-see attractions, this VR version feels weirdly anticlimactic after the repeated depictions of fire and destruction earlier in the experience. There's a certain novelty associated with moving through a virtual space while wearing a headset, and seeing other visitors also exploring the Villa being represented as floating busts that glide effortlessly through the space, only adds to it.

Rounding off the experience, there are several more interactive exhibits, including interactive tables that allow guests to dig through a layer of virtual sand to uncover hidden treasures like coins, swords and lamps; objects that can be touched to reveal their history on large screens above; and some AI-powered photobooths that overlay photos of guests' faces onto era-appropriate bodies to varying levels of success.

Photo: The Last Days of Pompeii

While MAD's trio of recent exhibitions has dominated this corner of London's immersive scene throughout 2025, the city has, of course, had several hugely popular projection-led experiences in the past. Frameless in Marble Arch has been displaying the work of artists like Monet, Hokusai and Dalí since first opening in 2022, and Immersive Van Gogh (an experience that was notably reviled by many) ran for many years out of its Shoreditch home, proving that there's a huge appetite for this kind of work.

Recently, there's been a notable shift towards creating experiences with a more substantial educational angle, with shows like The Moonwalkers (narrated by Tom Hanks) and Prehistoric Planet now making up the current line-up at King's Cross' Lightroom.

While there's constant debate around just how 'immersive' these kinds of experiences really are, they undoubtedly offer a modern way to learn about history that's not always possible within a traditional museum setting, and provides an experience that's both fun and engaging. Much like MAD's previous exhibitions, The Last Days of Pompeii's mix of traditional museum displays with modern technology makes it the kind of experience that's both appealing to younger visitors and satisfyingly informative for their parents, and a step above other projection-led immersive experiences on offer in London.

★★★½

---

The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition runs at Immerse LDN near Custom House until 15th March 2026. Tickets are priced from £24.00 and can be booked via Fever.

For more coverage and reviews of experiences like The Last Days of Pompeii: The Immersive Exhibition, check out our recent Reviews.