Pompeii

This post is going to be super long, because I really really liked Pompeii. Pompeii was a Roman city that was buried when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. It was lost for 1500 years after this happened until it was rediscovered in the 1599. The concept of this city being over 2000 years old boggles the mind. (At least it boggles my mind!) It is so well preserved, and it's insane to look at everything and think back to the people and culture of that time. The National Archaeological Museum of Naples contains a lot of the artifacts from Pompeii, and we went there also. I particularly like the sculptures there, most of which seemed to be Roman copies of classic Greek sculptures. We saw the sculpture of the Farnese Bull, which is the largest single sculpture ever recovered from antiquity. They had a collection of medical instruments that were recovered, and it was really insane to see them. Some of them looked exactly like modern surgical instruments. At least if you cleaned off the rust. ;-) They also had musical instruments, pots, mosaics, coins, a lot of pottery, and believe it or not glassware.

This first picture is taken of the main city square of Pompeii, and you can just make out Mt. Vesuvius in the background amidst the clouds. (Ominous, huh?) The pillars are from the Temple of Jupiter.
 

These pillar bases still have some of their marble attached.

There is a huge amount of pottery and other artifacts that still reside at Pompeii. After the eruption, many people died and were buried in volcanic debris. Over time, the organic material from the bodies decomposed leaving hollow places. When such a hollow place was found during excavation, they would fill it with plaster and create a plaster cast of the opening. Some of these casts are displayed in various locations in Pompeii, one is in the picture below. A few of them were a bit disturbing. Jonathan had a really good point though. It's not worth getting caught up in the fact that these people died, because they would have died by now anyway... what's amazing about Pompeii is the preservation that occured because of the eruption.
  

They recently finished restoration work on some of the bath houses in Pompeii. (There were a total of six, each with a men's and women's section. I am SO glad they had been reopened by the time we went, because they were amazing. You were able to see the frescos on the walls and intricate tilework on the flooring. The Roman baths were a hot spot for business and political interactions. (No pun intended.)

I wish the frescos on the walls were easier to see in the picture, you can kind of make them out...

 

I thought this was really cool, it was a bakery. It looks just like a modern brick pizza oven. The curved upright stone to the right of an oven is a flour grinder. The flour went in the top, and as the stone was turned (by animals or slaves) the flour dropped out the bottom.

This is the ancient fast food joint. ;-) The holes in the counter acted like a thermos into which pots of food were placed.


The Italians love dogs. Both anciently and modernly apparently. We saw quite a few stray dogs, particularly in Naples. They are well fed, loved by all, happy to lounge on the street strays! And apparently smart too. Funny story: I talk about driving in Italy in another post, but to recap there aren’t really official traffic rules. So as a pedestrian, if you wanted to cross a street it consisted of “start moving when there is a gap in traffic and pray.” The locals there have a much better grasp than we did of what constituted an appropriate gap, so we would often tag along behind them and go when they did! (An effective technique.) We were crossing a SIX lane road once, and there was a stray dog crossing with us. I kid you not. He went to the marked crosswalk (no light, but still at least marked), waited for a gap, crossed halfway across the street, waited in the median, and crossed the rest of the street when there was a second gap. It was amazing. We followed him just like we did all the other locals.

Without Benjamin seeing (we don’t want to support the feed-the-dog habit he and Lady already have) we fed some pizza to a stray that lived at Pompeii. They have a whole organized effort (with giant signs explaining this effort) in Pompeii to support and feed the strays that live at the site. He was a surprisingly well behaved stray. We initially told him no, and he immediately walked a little bit away to lay down. After we gave him the pizza I thought he would follow us all day, but he meandered for a short while and then moved on. Like I said, well fed. We were not going to be his only chance for dinner. The picture below is from the House of the Tragic Poet. This famous "Beware of Dog" or "Cave Canem" mosaic is in the entryway.

Another household with some amazingly preserved frescos on the walls.

Easier to see them in this picture I think:

I don't know how those pillars are standing after 2,000 years.

I can't remember which house this courtyard was in either, but again, you can see the preservation of the tilework and frescos.

This is the Temple of Isis, serving Pompeii's Egyptian community. A shrine here held holy water from the Nile.

This is the larger of two theaters in Pompeii:

These next two pictures were taken in the smaller theater next door.