Food and wine cross the centuries to bring Pompeii to life

The word for a Roman dinner party is a convivium; literally "a being together". A word we've absorbed into English to characterise a good time. The Romans' predecessors in central Italy, the Etruscans, often chose to have themselves immortalised for eternity as they would have been in the middle of a jolly feast. Wine cup in hand and snacks at their elbows, their terracotta avatars recline atop their funerary urns while reminding us of the pleasures of life.  While many nationalities take their culinary traditions seriously, the Italians have a spiritual bond between food, drink, life and love that's been hard-wired into their culture from the beginning.

Oxford's Ashmolean Museum builds its current exhibition, Last Supper in Pompeii, on this simple truth. The result is a joyous romp through a laid-back, pleasure-seeking culture most of us would have been delighted to be a part of ... until one Mount Vesuvius decided to intervene.

Pompeii is familiar territory for many history lovers and always a popular draw. The British Museum's last major exhibition on the subject was just six years ago. (My review here.) But the food angle is an inspired one, bringing the people of Pompeii to life in a very relatable way while also opening the door to display a vast amount of art and artefacts. Pretty much everything in Pompeii seemed to lead back to a good party.

We're welcomed by a life-sized statue of Bacchus on loan from the Archeological Museum in Naples, source of many of the best items here. (This is a potent reminder of just how rich that museum is; both this show and the British Museum's current Troy exhibition are stuffed with loans from there, yet their core collection is so vast I doubt visitors in Naples would notice.) Bacchus holds a wine jug in his hand, grapes and vines weave through his tousled hair and his fit yet louche pose is imbued with a raw sexuality. The message is clear: these people liked a good time.

The early galleries explain the role of celebratory food and drink in Italian culture, then take a look at why Pompeii was such a special place. Anyone who's been on that stretch of the Italian coast knows that it's favoured with clement, sunny weather and generally mild, beautiful seas that yielded enormous catches for little work. The surrounding landscape is green and gentle, and the slopes beneath Vesuvius were almost obscenely fertile. Locals had no idea the reason was volcanic soil. One of the treasures of the show is a wall painting containing the only contemporary depiction of Vesuvius before it blew its top in 79 AD. It was a towering, quiet, wooded mountain. The Italians were familiar with volcanos, but nobody suspected one beneath the familiar peak.

Two impressive galleries at the heart of the exhibition set the story in the garden and dining room, often interchangeable for culinary good times and always at the heart of the ancient Roman household. Though small panels of fresco are on display throughout, here we have whole walls transported in their entirety to set the scene.

Videos on a continuous loop on other walls enhance the illusion. One is a particularly lifelike conjuring of one of Pompeii's most glamorous eating spaces, with dining couches set in a raised, highly-decorated apse through which a narrow water feature ran to join the pool in the garden you would have faced through the meal. Garden dining tables with water flowing through them still show up at Hampton Court or Chelsea most years, suggesting that Pompeiian designers knew what they were about.

The room beyond this is more practical, reflecting the kitchen itself. These were small spaces compared to the lavish dining areas they served, but the preserved foods and spices brought up in excavations and on display here attest to the Romans wide-ranging tastes. The exhibition ends with a section on Britannia, where the objects aren't nearly as elegant but the message is clear. Out here in the hinterlands people were doing their best to copy the fine dining trends in the imperial capital, whether in tableware or cooking styles.

We end with a section on death, marking the abrupt end of Pompeii's party beneath Vesuvius' toxic gas and ash fall. Two of the most haunting treasures wait here, in suitably sombre lighting. The first is a magnificent bronze of the god Apollo, with his ivory and lapis eyes still intact and radiating life. He was probably used to support a tray of drinks or canapés in a wealthy home, but here ... positioned at the end of a corridor of tomb monuments ... he seems to be welcoming you to the afterlife. Just beyond him is the Lady of Oplontis.

Anyone who's visited Pompeii will have seen, and probably been haunted by, the plaster casts of the victims of the disaster. These were made quite simply, by pouring plaster into cavities in the ash left when human (or animal) soft tissue had disintegrated. Finds are still happening but casting methods have moved on. This lady's final resting place was discovered in the late 1970s and she's cast in resin, which captures far more detail, from the treasure she'd wrapped her body around to the painful tension in her face and limbs. One hopes she enjoyed her life, because it was a horrible death.

But as thought provoking as these big pieces are, it's the smaller bits of normal life that will stick with you. The exhibition is stuffed with the kinds of everyday objects that wouldn't be out of place in our own kitchens, dining rooms and gardens. Many are humble, some are ridiculously grand ... almost all would have been objects of desire at their time of manufacture.

The paraphernalia for storing, decanting and serving wine could be a mini-exhibition on its own. There are delicate glass vases and drinking cups and silver vessels with extraordinary details like incised patterns, lions heads and frolicking animals. But the item I'd bring home with me was a silver strainer, used for separating sediment from the wine, punched with ornate patterns of geometric precision.

The cookware was equally fascinating, and surprising in just how familiar much of it seems. There's a barbecue grill you could put into service immediately, and a pan with six cups that looks precisely like the one I keep meaning to buy to produce Danish aebleskiver (apple donuts). The Romans, it's thought, used it to cook eggs or cakes. There are spice storage vessels, colanders, griddles and cooking pots that haven't changed their form in 2,000 years. Not everything is familiar to the modern eye, however. The Romans had a legendary fondness for dormice, which it turns out they raised for household consumption. You can see a purpose-made dormouse pot complete with a spiral of running paths moulded into the terracotta sides. Basically an early habitrail with a tasty snack as the final objective.

It's rare that an exhibition about the ancient world can bridge the centuries and bring people to life. Through a shared love of food and wine, this show does that with the flare of a Michelin starred restaurant. Get there in its final weeks if you can. (The show closes on 12 January.)