Italy: Pompeii

Our Day in Pompeii

One of the best preserved homes in Pompeii

Frozen in time...plaster cast of Pompeii citizen's final moment

We left Venice and slept in Bolagna before our travel day down to southern Italy.  We purposefully chose a route along the eastern coast through San Marino, and it was a most excellent choice.

When we were in New Zealand early this year we tried heading up the west coast of the south island on a road that looked like it was on the coast....but really was far enough inland that we saw very little water (plus it was a 2 lane road with many twists and turns).  But the path shown above in Italy was on a highway right next to the water.  It was a beautiful drive.

More impressive for me was what the Italian engineers did when the road turned into the mountains that run down the middle of Italy.  There are no hairpin curves on this route as most of it is like an interstate.  Instead of hugging the mountain they built raised roads that cross valleys and seemingly hop from hill to hill.  Think of a major US city with fly over bridges that cross over larger roads below and that is what this road was like....only it was flying over valleys etc.

And when that couldn't be done the engineers just plowed right through the mountains with tunnels.  Literally!   There was one tunnel that was over 10km in length and went straight through the tallest peaks.  Bravo!   That was one road where I was happy to pay the 20Euro fee to use (about $25).

That is the other thing about Italian roads....they love their toll roads and aren't afraid to sock it to you.  In our travels from the border with Slovenia down to Pompeii and then up to Rome and Florence a few days later, we easily have paid $150+ in tolls.  But one nice thing about these toll roads is they take credit cards!

We have already driven over 4,000km in Europe and have plenty left to drive.  To get a sense of what our car is like on these drives Rachel took this 1 minute video.  Teenage girls, Taylor Swift, and too many hours on the road get you this.... (I think AJ is hilarious as well)

Link if embedded video doesn't work:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJDEvHzOzV0

Pompeii

I'm going with the ancient spelling of Pompeii with two 'i's at the end versus the modern spelling with one 'i'   Apparently once your city has been vaporized by a volcanic explosion you have to lose a vowel out of your city name.

We started our tour learning about the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79AD.  You can physically see the part about the roofs being caved in by the eruption as you walk through the city.  There are entire homes, walls erect, streets intact but unless archaeologists have rebuilt roofs then they are all open air homes.  

Ancient Pompeii covers 49 acres of land.  35 have been excavated with 12 open to the public.  We got an audio guide to go through the city and started with a 2 hour orientation tour with a guide who ended up being not so good.  So we ditched him a little over an hour into his tour and focused on our self guided tour.

If Vesuvius was on trial for destroying Pompeii and surrounding cities, the evidence is fairly clear given the top of the mountain is gone.  What is interesting is that in 79AD no one had any idea that Vesuvius was a volcano.  It looked like any other mountain until it blew sky high.  It is still an active volcano with its last eruption coming during WWII in 1944.

Pliny the Younger (a Roman whose uncle, Pliny the Elder, died in the blast) described the 79AD explosion in detail to a Roman historian 25 years after the explosion.  He didn't refer to it as a mushroom cloud but that is essentially what he described.  When Mt. Saint Helens blew in the 1980s near Seattle it had the same kind of cloud form described by Pliny the Younger.

He was many miles away in what would today be Naples and described how ash covered the ground as if it had snowed.  He also spoke about how difficult it was to breath.  

Below Rachel stands in the Pompeii Forum with Vesuvius in the background.  (Insert joke here about pregnant lady being ready to blow).

Over 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii each year.  Some of the houses we went into were very, very crowded.  But on the positive side you could feel the life of the city with so many people around.  If you ever visit Pompeii and want to avoid the crowds then either come off season or stay until the end of the day.  The last 2 hours almost no one was there...

Ancient Pompeii was a hedonist's dream.  With only about 20,000 residence, the town had 30 brothels...seems like a lot of prostitutes for that sized town!  One useful thing our live tour guide showed us were phallic symbols etched into the road pointing to houses of prostitution...ancient street sign advertising.  Inside the brothel were mosaics and paintings which essentially served as a menu of sorts.  We passed by the brothel for obvious reasons but read enough about it to get the idea.

Basically Pompeii followed the Roman rules of 'If it feels good, do it!'  I remember seeing a History Channel documentary last year which talked about Christians from the first century interpreted Pompeii's destruction as an act of God due to their wickedness.  Maybe, maybe not....but what is for sure is the eruption preserved an ancient city at a moment in time as no other city has been preserved.

Daily Life

Work started at dawn but rules said no more than 8 hours a day....if my friend Richie was here I would tease him about Pompeii obviously being an ancient 'union' city.  Shops were usually family run with the store downstairs and the living quarters upstairs.  The town had street artisans, artists, goldsmith, bronze makers, and all sorts of professions catering to maritime activities as the port literally was directly outside the city gate (which now serves as the main entry into the town for tourists).   Slaves were sold in the forum based on age and skills. The best slaves could buy their freedom by repaying their purchase price or as a reward from an appreciative master (usually after their death)

The area below was called the basilica which in Roman times was the area of justice, law courts etc.  Rome had judges, used witnesses and testimony and western law finds its beginnings in Roman law.  The raised area (hard to see but its where the pillars are in the picture immediately below) would be where sentences were handed down.  Being raised indicated authority and served a security function as well in case the sentence wasn't so popular.

All basilica were laid out in a similar fashion and later Christians took the structure and made their churches with the same outline.  In Rome we saw a fantastic example of this with the basilica in the Roman Forum which looks almost exactly like St. Peter's Basilica.

Politics

To participate in elections as a candidate, citizens had to be at least 25 years old and be wealthy. They would advertise by writing their name and slogans on city walls. The word candidate comes from the white robes called 'the candid'.... an all white toga worn on the day they announced they were running for office

Below is an example of political graffiti promoting a candidate.  We saw quite a few of these kinds of markings around town.  The funniest one, though not political, was found near the sports arena where a young man wrote that all the girls couldn't resist him....and then adjusted that (no doubt because his friends knew the truth) to something like 'Well, almost all of them'  

The City Streets

If you think about an eruption that has 10-12 feet of ash fall and then even more fall in the days after the initial blast (some estimates indicate the depth of some ash was as much as 75 feet), you can image that the streets were nearly perfectly preserved as were the lower parts of all the homes.  It is a fascinating walk back in history...

The streets have these stepping stones to cross from one side of the street to the other.  Why?  Because there was no sewage system in the city!  Sewage would flow out into the streets and there was a system where they would release water from the aqueducts to clean the streets each night.  We saw a number of homes where the toilets would be right next to or even IN the kitchen because the kitchens were often next to the street.  In other words they would flush kitchen waste and other waste directly into the street.

One of the reasons archaeologists believe Pompeii was a middle class town is because of this sewage problem.  That doesn't mean they were all poor, just that the town was more a blue color town.  Many of the really fancy homes we went into were owned by freed slaves who made a name for themselves financially but would never be considered the upper crust of society due to once being a slave.

When we saw the amazing art work and mosaics later, it really drove home just how rich and powerful Rome was during its pinnacle years.  If the middle class towns were this nice, image what the Beverly Hills type towns were like!

One other comment about the stepping stones across the street....the width of the stones was standard within the city but chariots and carts from other parts of the empire rarely 'worked' in these streets.  So, one of the businesses outside the 7 city gates were to rent 'vehicles' that would work in the city.

The remains of the aquaduct were throughout the town.  This is where they would release water into the streets...

At the base of each aquaduct, they had small cisterns where people of the city could come and get water for their daily use.  The cisterns have now been turned into water fountains where tourists can refill their water bottles etc.  I thought that was well done having us use these things as they had been used nearly 2000 years ago (minus the fluoride and modern pipes)

The House of Menander

One of the best preserved houses is called the House of Menander.  As noted previously, the roof would have collapsed in the blast and has been rebuilt, but nearly everything else in this home has been frozen in time.

For security reasons there were no windows in the home.  Light came through a hole in the atrium ceiling which also served to collect rain water for use in the home (what Rachel and AJ are sitting in below)

The back of the house was quite impressive with many rooms off this open space including the dining room, bath, family worship area (they would worship their dead relatives), and nicely kept gardens.

Same courtyard taken from the opposite corner as picture above

One disappointment about Pompeii is that all the original statues and artwork (at least the most important pieces) have been taken from the city and are now displayed in a museum in Naples.  I understand why they did this because exposure to weather causes decay, and these paintings, mosaics, and statues are treasures that should be preserved.  They have exact replicas in the homes of the things they have taken away, but it was still a little disappointing.

Instead of pouting about it, we decided to visit that museum the next morning on our drive up to Rome.  While the artifacts were incredible (and imbedded from here forward in this post), I have a travel alert to anyone planning a trip to Italy.  Avoid Naples!

Naples is absolutely the armpit of Italy...filthy with trash all over the place, huge amounts of graffiti, and the most insane drivers I have seen since our days in Egypt 20 years ago.   It seems as if there is no rule of law in the city.  People will literally park their cars in the middle of the street...and not just some nut cases here and there....it happens all over the place so the traffic is crazy.  We read a bit about the city and learned that there is a very strong mafia presence there which basically rules the city.

Anyway, back to Pompeii and the House of Menander....below is a portrait of Mr. Menander which now resides in the museum noted above.

Personal worship area of the Menanders.  The little statues are icons of dead relatives.

Bath area in the house....

Dead relatives found during excavation.  As a family we went through this house with our live tour guide in the morning, but he went so fast that we went back to the house late in the day when few people were still in the city.  What was interesting was listening to all the different stories different tour guides said about these bones.  We heard at least 4 different stories which makes me wonder how many tour guides just make stuff up!

Other art work in the Menander house (theme of these paintings was what happened in ancient Troy)....

The Prophetess on the right had warned the people of Troy not to bring the horse into the city.  They ignored her and the rest is history.  This is her death sentence...

The waiting bench outside Mr. Menander's house where people who had come to call on him for various reasons would wait.  

Plaster Body Casts

In the 1800s as significant excavations of Pompeii began, archaeologists came across hollow cavities with bones at the bottom of them.  Through a stroke of pure genius, the lead archaeologists stopped all excavations and ordered plaster to be injected into the holes found.  Once the plaster hardened, the team carefully removed all the dirt / rocks from around the plaster they had poured to reveal body casts of both humans and animals.  Some of the casts captured facial expressions as well as the wrinkle of clothes.

In my visit to Pompeii during my college days, this was by far the most powerful and poignant part of the tour for me.  There was one house I walked into where they had the casts laid out in the positions where they were found and it was incredibly powerful.

I told Rachel and the girls about what I had seen 20 years ago and unfortunately created an expectation that led to a big disappointment.  Almost all of the body casts have been taken out of the city.  The only two we all saw are the two above and, as you can see, they are now behind glass.  We were told the others were at the Naples Museum, but none were there.  So, either the house I saw years ago is no longer open or the body casts are out on tour with a traveling Pompeii exhibit.

By 5pm AJ was ready to go as were the girls so Rachel walked back to the hotel with them (10 minute walk) while I spent 2 more hours listening to the audio tour and taking pictures.  I found a few more casts in odd places (like the meat market!) and in an open storage area (see picture at beginning of post).

Fast Food, 1 Century AD Style

Few Romans cooked in their own homes.  Instead they would head to the local fast food joint and pick up food.  These fast food places were ALL over the city from areas outside the theater and amphitheater to places all along the city streets.

The girls had some fun acting like they were taking orders etc.

As we wandered the streets, we would occassionally come across something very impressive or interesting.  The house below wasn't even open to the public, had a closed iron gate over the entrance but it looked incredible....

And we ran across a house with this interesting bit of furniture which was originally owned by the first Senator in Rome to stab Julius Caesar...

And another fun find as we were walking along....

The theater...notice the bottom rows are white marble which lends credence to the idea that something closer to 10-15 feet of ash fell on the city.  Those seats were buried beneath the ash and are original.  Everything else was stolen / used as a rock quarry in the years that followed until nothing visible was left of the city.

The amphitheater....

Where gladiators entered the arena to much pomp and circumstance (notice AJ sacked out!)...

I love this picture primarily because of AJ.  Look how he has his little hands up like the rest of us...

The photo-bomber struck multiple times in Pompeii.  Can you see her?  The first picture actually has two bombers as she has a one of the kids in training....

House of Faun

The house of Faun is an absolutely massive home covering 24,000 square feet and an entire city block.  It is named after this statue of a Faun in the courtyard.... 

Which is actually quite small when H stands next to it...

...and quite funny when V imitates the original in the museum...

This home had gigantic gardens....

...and a large section of the Naples Archaeological Museum holds items found in this home.  Check out the columns in the picture below which are covered in mosaics (never seen that before!)

The mosaics were quite detailed and it's really amazing how carefully they were all put together to create the various pictures...

This massive mosaic at the Faun House has over 1 MILLION little stones in it.  Wow!

Other items of interest we saw at the museum (all from Pompeii unless otherwise noted)...

There were other towns and villages destroyed by the Mt Vesuvius eruption, the most significant of which was a town called Herculaneum.  This was a much richer town without the sewage problems noted above in Pompeii.  The items below came from this town....

Statue of Caesar Augustus...

Not sure who is on the horse....looks like H :)

And this last statue was a part of the Farnese collection.  It was in a Roman bath house (don't remember the city) and is the largest sculpture carved out of a single piece of stone.  I wish I had put AJ by the base to give a perspective on just how massive this sculpture really is....

Other interesting / Favorite Photos...

The baby bump...circa June 27, 2013

Just before we headed up to Rome....

Funny girl...

AJ and his cars...

The girls...

...Getting Silly....

...and Sillier...

Pompeii door bell.  People would knock and for security reasons would have to identify themselves by talking through the pipe before being let in....

Main gate which used to exit to the port and now exits to the place where tourists enter / exit...

All in all, a good day....

 Til next time, God bless.