The Pompeii Antiquarium is no longer open to the public. But it once housed the first plaster casts made in Pompeii.

Opened in 1861, the antiquarium was destroyed by Allied air raids in 1943. It was rebuilt after the war and reopened in 1948. Eventually, it was closed again, though I have been unable to find the date that it closed. Although many other Pompeiian treasures were exhibited here, the plaster casts of the bodies were perhaps the largest draw. 

According to a guidebook from the 1950s, 

In the passage are exhibited some of the gruesome casts of human bodies. They have been taken by the simple and ingenious method of pouring liquid plaster in the hollows that had been left in the layers of ash. Death by asphyxia has stiffened these human shaped as they were when they pantingly breathed their last, so as dramatically to display to the onlooker's eyes the last moments of the tragedy with which the life of the buried city ended forever.

 

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