Updated by: June 5, 2026
Salve!
Today I woke up and decided I needed to see the Rome exhibition showing at Melbourne Museum. I walked into the city, about 12 kilometers, but I’m training for the Camino de Santiago, so the legs needed the work.
With my surname being Mercuri, and a caduceus sitting on my family crest, I felt compelled to see if anything about this museum visit would shout Mercury to me.
Boy, did it deliver.
It started before I even reached the exhibition. Standing in the museum foyer, the first thing I saw was a sign for the Mercury Restaurant. I smiled. Then I looked up and there he was, a full bronze Mercury in flight, one foot raised, arm reaching skyward, the caduceus in his hand. Not a Roman artefact. Something closer to home.
The plaque read: Mercury, C. Douglas Richardson & W. Rocke, about 1899. Mercury stood astride The Age newspaper building, 233 Collins Street, Melbourne, for 70 years.
I had worked for Fairfax, the company that owned The Age. For seven decades, Mercury had stood above the building that published their words, watching over the messages going out into the world. And I had been part of that organization without ever knowing he was there.
Inside the exhibition, he was everywhere. He greeted visitors at the entrance: Salve! I’m Mercury, God of messages and mischief. Follow my winged shoes through the streets of Ancient Rome. A 2,000-year-old fresco showed him striding through a rose garden, alive with movement even now. And in a glass case, small enough to hold in your hand, a tiny bronze Mercury, the kind Romans kept in their homes as a household god, watching over the threshold, the journeys, the daily life.
That was the one that stopped me longest. Not the grand statue. The small one. The domestic one. The one that lived with a family.
I carry the name Mercuri. My family crest bears his symbol. It was a Wednesday. Dies Mercurii. Mercury’s day.
Perhaps that explains why he was everywhere I looked.
Or perhaps he always is.
Salve.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
