ITALY – POMPEII – An Old Lady with a Backpack

February 18, 2023

From Naples I took the 20 minute train to Pompeii. From the station, it was about a 20 minute walk to the ruins.

A brief history of Pompeii: It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with 2.5 million visitors yearly. It was a wealthy town of about 11,000 people. Nearby Mount Vesuvius (8 km or 5 miles away) erupted in 79 AD and buried the entire town in 4-6 metres (13-20 ft) of volcanic ash and pumice. It happened so fast that everything froze in that instant. Well, sort of. The first blast lasted about 18 hours, raining pumice down and allowing some smart citizens to escape. Sadly, many still died during their attempted escape. A family group of 13 were found trying to escape, running over 3.5 metres of pumice. Their bodies have been made into cast plasters, capturing the terrifying moment.

Some intimate moments were also captured, like this child being played with.

and this very intimate act (you can still see his boner)

Organic things (trees and humans) decayed over time and left a void that archaeologists could use as mounds to make plaster casts of their Sfinal, and often gruesome, moments of life. One was of a man holding his nose.

The first thing I saw was the Teatro Grande, a Roman looking amphitheater.

From there I could see the grid streets and remains of building walls of Pompeii from above. It was much larger than I thought (64-67 hectares or 160-170 acres)

Not knowing which way to go, I just started to wander, using the map from the ticket counter as a guide. The streets were made of huge stones, not small cobblestones. Some streets had arches over them.

The streets were much lower than the sidewalks. There were grooves in the stones from cart wheels passing. There were strange blocks at the ends of the streets that reminded me of barricades. I don’t know what they were for. Maybe a guide would have been a smart idea….

years of wagon wheels cut a groove in the rock

The things that stick out for me were the detailed and intricate mosaic floors in many of the mansions.

Yes, they were mansions! They had beautiful gardens (obviously newly planted).

Some were two stories high. It is amazing they they remained standing after the ensuing earthquake after the eruption.

Many had huge indoor marble baths, fountains, pools and statues.

Many had colourful walls and murals.

There was lots of pottery as well.

The kitchens were almost always L shaped covered in tiles. There were mysterious holes in the counter tops. Were they sinks, were they cooking areas, or were they refuse bins. There was also a mysterious drain hole near the bottom of the counter.

There was another amphitheater that was much bigger than the first. It had a very Coliseum look to it.

The entrance was through a tunnel under the bleachers.

The benches were all covered in moss.

One of the popular tourist destinations was the brothel because of its erotic paintings on the walls. It is located at a popular social hub. Maybe the brothel made it popular?? There were political and sport advertisements on the exterior walls. The Roman word for brothel was lupanar, meaning a wolf den, and a prostitute was called a lupa (“she-wolf”). Pompeii had 35 brothels for a population of 10,000. Do the math; that works out to one brothel for every 70ish men. Although I didn’t see it, apparently there were phalluses engraved on the roads to lead you to the brothel.

This particular brothel had 10 working rooms, with stone beds for doing business. There is no indication of a door or other means of privacy.

There was a small toilet in the corner of the brothel, as well.

I went up the Tower of Mercury on the edge of town. It is the highest point in Pompeii and I could see almost the entire town.

There was a statue of a centaur in a huge plaza near the Basilica.

From here I could see Mt. Vesuvius looming in background. As I stood there, I tried to imagine that huge mountain, so close, spewing gas and ash so violently this entire place was buried beneath so much debris, it was essentially wiped off the map. The huge dip in the middle is the part that blew off. It used to have a peaked top.