A Blast from the Past November 27, 2006
We booked a tour that included Pompeii and Mt Vesuvius for today. We haven’t taken many guided tours since we left Russia almost three months ago but with one day left in Naples and no good way to get to Vesuvius we decided that this would be a good time to bend our rules of travel.
The guide picked us up at the Duomo a few blocks from the hotel shortly before 11AM. There was another couple from Cambridge, England, who was also on our tour, although they were only doing Pompeii.
We arrived at Pompeii and the jaded tourist that now resides in us smiled and said “I knew it”. The old town is wedged into today’s urban sprawl and from the outside it seems not to be an inviting place. That perspective changed once we were inside. We left the outside modern day world behind and were taken back almost two thousand years as we wandered around this sprawling archeological site.
There is a question about who founded Pompeii. One theory is that it was the Osci in the 8th century BC while more historians are now leaning toward the Etruscans in the 7th century BC. It was visited and settled by the Greeks before the Sannites came down from the mountains of Irpinia to establish themselves along the coast. I had always thought that Pompeii was a Roman colony, but now know that it had a history long before Rome was Rome.
The ruins of Pompeii were rediscovered in the late 16th century during the digging of a canal to divert the Sarno River. Nothing was done with the find until almost 150 years later under the direction of Bourbon Carlos III. The neighboring city of Herculaneum, covered by a layer of solid lava rock, had been excavated years earlier but the fact that Pompeii was covered in a layer of ash made it much easier and the finds were better preserved than in the former site.
During the 18th century the main purpose of the excavations was to locate artifacts and remove them for relocation to museums, public and private. Since the late 19th century the purpose of the excavations has been to preserve the site as much as possible while bringing back the elements of the upper structures to provide a sensation of life and high emotional impact.
If you have seen the human figures on Discovery Channel shows about Pompeii you may be interested to know that these are plaster casts, beginning around 1860 by the then head of excavations Giuseppe Fiorelli. He pioneered the process of locating the hollows left by organic masses, drilling into the hollow and then filling it with plaster. The forms of over 1100 people as well as animals, plants, wooden objects etc have all been saved in this fashion.
If it seems that a lot of time has been spent digging Pompeii out of the ash you are right. The fact is that it was a large town that contained dwellings and business to support 15,000 people, give or take a few thousand, gives us an idea of how large this project was. The town came under direct control of the Romans in 80BC after the “Social Wars” and became a center for wealthy Romans that built villas on the hillsides surrounding the Bay of Naples. Because of this the town had for years undergone civic improvements sponsored by Rome. These improvements were in the form of an aqueduct to supply the town with water and local water system to distribute the water, large ornate public areas such as temples and judicial buildings and roads built to Roman standards.
In 62 AD there was a severe earthquake close to Pompeii that caused appreciable damage. On August 24, 79 AD, with rebuilding still being carried out, Mt. Vesuvius came to life spewing ash and lava down on the surrounding countryside. Many of the residents of Pompeii were able to escape but many lost their lives in the devastation that rained down from the summit of Vesuvius. What took the life of the town almost two thousand years ago also preserved a view into the past that we would otherwise not have.
To walk among the ruins of Pompeii is an amazing experience. Much of the layout of the town has been excavated with the buildings in various states of completeness. Some shops may still have cooking pots or a bakery may still have its oven. Most structures are just a shell but make up the neighborhoods along the stone lined streets. Some houses still have mosaic floors and partial murals on their walls. One brothel we visited still had its catalog of services, in living color, displayed along its walls to entice customers two millennia ago.
You may or may not know that Naples is the origin of Pizza so we had the local version for lunch today. A simple pie that says to you “this is the way it was meant to be”. A very good mozzarella cheese with a tangy tomato sauce on a thin crust with a pinch of basil is the pie of the day. The other classic is made with tomato sauce, garlic and oregano.
Next stop was Vesuvius. We said good-bye to Norman and Jan our new Cambridge friends and with our Italian-only speaking driver we were off to the winding road up the flanks of the infamous volcano. The road runs out for us peasants and tourists about 500-600 feet below the summit but a twenty minute walk later you find yourself looking into the crater that buried two towns and thousands of people. The summit today was covered by clouds so we were not able to see either Naples or Pompeii but the views of the crater and rim were excellent. We walked about a quarter of the way around the rim until the trail ran out and then headed back to the where we had left the driver with a promise to return by 3:30 PM. We made it with 4 minutes to spare. Vesuvius is the only active volcano in continental Europe.
The guide picked us up at the Duomo a few blocks from the hotel shortly before 11AM. There was another couple from Cambridge, England, who was also on our tour, although they were only doing Pompeii.
We arrived at Pompeii and the jaded tourist that now resides in us smiled and said “I knew it”. The old town is wedged into today’s urban sprawl and from the outside it seems not to be an inviting place. That perspective changed once we were inside. We left the outside modern day world behind and were taken back almost two thousand years as we wandered around this sprawling archeological site.
There is a question about who founded Pompeii. One theory is that it was the Osci in the 8th century BC while more historians are now leaning toward the Etruscans in the 7th century BC. It was visited and settled by the Greeks before the Sannites came down from the mountains of Irpinia to establish themselves along the coast. I had always thought that Pompeii was a Roman colony, but now know that it had a history long before Rome was Rome.
The ruins of Pompeii were rediscovered in the late 16th century during the digging of a canal to divert the Sarno River. Nothing was done with the find until almost 150 years later under the direction of Bourbon Carlos III. The neighboring city of Herculaneum, covered by a layer of solid lava rock, had been excavated years earlier but the fact that Pompeii was covered in a layer of ash made it much easier and the finds were better preserved than in the former site.
During the 18th century the main purpose of the excavations was to locate artifacts and remove them for relocation to museums, public and private. Since the late 19th century the purpose of the excavations has been to preserve the site as much as possible while bringing back the elements of the upper structures to provide a sensation of life and high emotional impact.
If you have seen the human figures on Discovery Channel shows about Pompeii you may be interested to know that these are plaster casts, beginning around 1860 by the then head of excavations Giuseppe Fiorelli. He pioneered the process of locating the hollows left by organic masses, drilling into the hollow and then filling it with plaster. The forms of over 1100 people as well as animals, plants, wooden objects etc have all been saved in this fashion.
If it seems that a lot of time has been spent digging Pompeii out of the ash you are right. The fact is that it was a large town that contained dwellings and business to support 15,000 people, give or take a few thousand, gives us an idea of how large this project was. The town came under direct control of the Romans in 80BC after the “Social Wars” and became a center for wealthy Romans that built villas on the hillsides surrounding the Bay of Naples. Because of this the town had for years undergone civic improvements sponsored by Rome. These improvements were in the form of an aqueduct to supply the town with water and local water system to distribute the water, large ornate public areas such as temples and judicial buildings and roads built to Roman standards.
In 62 AD there was a severe earthquake close to Pompeii that caused appreciable damage. On August 24, 79 AD, with rebuilding still being carried out, Mt. Vesuvius came to life spewing ash and lava down on the surrounding countryside. Many of the residents of Pompeii were able to escape but many lost their lives in the devastation that rained down from the summit of Vesuvius. What took the life of the town almost two thousand years ago also preserved a view into the past that we would otherwise not have.
To walk among the ruins of Pompeii is an amazing experience. Much of the layout of the town has been excavated with the buildings in various states of completeness. Some shops may still have cooking pots or a bakery may still have its oven. Most structures are just a shell but make up the neighborhoods along the stone lined streets. Some houses still have mosaic floors and partial murals on their walls. One brothel we visited still had its catalog of services, in living color, displayed along its walls to entice customers two millennia ago.
You may or may not know that Naples is the origin of Pizza so we had the local version for lunch today. A simple pie that says to you “this is the way it was meant to be”. A very good mozzarella cheese with a tangy tomato sauce on a thin crust with a pinch of basil is the pie of the day. The other classic is made with tomato sauce, garlic and oregano.
Next stop was Vesuvius. We said good-bye to Norman and Jan our new Cambridge friends and with our Italian-only speaking driver we were off to the winding road up the flanks of the infamous volcano. The road runs out for us peasants and tourists about 500-600 feet below the summit but a twenty minute walk later you find yourself looking into the crater that buried two towns and thousands of people. The summit today was covered by clouds so we were not able to see either Naples or Pompeii but the views of the crater and rim were excellent. We walked about a quarter of the way around the rim until the trail ran out and then headed back to the where we had left the driver with a promise to return by 3:30 PM. We made it with 4 minutes to spare. Vesuvius is the only active volcano in continental Europe.
posted by Gary and Holly Davis @ 11:01 PM
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