The city under the ash

Pompeii is in some ways like the city of Ostia Antica near Rome. Pompeii is a complex and complete city. There are political buildings, temples, markets, bakers, bars, restaurants, brothels, baths, laundromats, villas, an amphitheater, a school, the old port, and old graves. And there are no few tourists, filling the streets with people, probably crowding it as much as it ever was in its heyday.

But Pompeii has more power. It feels more alive. It breathes a hot and dusty breath. In Pompeii, the streets are narrow, the width of a car, and deep set, with the curb often being a foot high. The sidewalks are from 2 to 4 feet wide, depending on whether it is a major road or not. buildings form solid city blocks. Along the streets there is not a single green thing, and not shade at all. The streets and sidewalks are stone. The buildings are mostly plastered brick. While there are the remnants of many old water fountains, such as we saw at the Roman forum, we found only 2 in our wandering that were flowing. And in this hot, dry, sunny stone jungle, they were very welcome.

We arrived through the main entrance, after a short walk from our hotel, passing by the old port, and exploring the temples and political buildings withing the city gates. There are, scattered throughout the city, casts of the bodies from the excavations. Essentially, people were covered in hot ash, and their bodies decayed, leaving a hollow area inside the rock.

  When these are found, as the city is excavated, plaster is poured into the opening to fill the hollow area, creating a cast of the person who was there. The cast is then excavated from the rock, and these are the molds that you see of the people of Pompeii. Some of the molds have exceptional detail. You can see the facial expressions clearly, whether it is relaxed in sleep or mouth open in pain.

We had originally intended to brave Italy's most notorious city, Naples, to see some examples of these, but decided to avoid that area after seeing the examples on display withing the city. We were further convinced to avoid the Naples Archaeological Museum when we found that other artifacts from the excavation were also on display.

  There is a storage area which is gated off, but easily visible, filled with rows and rows of artifacts such as statues and amphorae, located off the main plaza. In the main temple to the right, after entering the city, we learned that the Romans did not always build their columns from stone. In fact, the columns were built of odd shape bricks and mortar, with an overlay of concrete or something to give them the solid stone look. In fact, we would later learn through seeing many other examples, that this was the most common method for the Romans to build their columns. As we do today, they were building faux Greek architecture on the cheap.

After getting acquainted with the main area of town, our next order of business was to take a long walk to the edge of town to see the very well preserved villa dei misterie. It lies beyond the edged of town, and so, the road leading to it passes through the many tombs that lie along the major roads into towns. The house sits lower then the rest of the city, and was therefore covered more deeply. The house now seems to sit in a pit, and the area around it has not been fully excavated. The home is a beautiful sprawling manor home, with tiled mosaic floors and detailed frescoes on the walls. What makes the house the most famous is one particular room, where the frescoes are very well protected, and depict a secret ritual.

The colors are so vivid, that I would guess they have been restored. Most other frescoes in the town, even within this building are in much more muted colors. After viewing the house it was a long walk back along the hot stone roads, which were occasionally rutted by the passing of many ancient wagon wheels.

    Somewhat common in this area are the bakeries, which are easily identifiable by their flour mills. These contraptions are a stone column atop a rounded stone base, with a lip around the edge. The column would have had wooden bars jutting out of the square holes in the sides, which would have let man or beast turn the column upon the base. Grain was poured in at the top, the as it was ground would leak out the bottom, where it could be collected on the lip. At this point we took a break to fill out water bottles and buy a sandwich from a little shop there. Sadly the food is expensive and not very good, but it is all that can be found inside the city. Here, there were quite a few of the many stray dogs which live throughout the town. From here we ventured further on, into the more narrow streets. We happened to notice that many of the buildings are marked with with phallic symbols. According to one online source, these are designed to turn away the evil eye. 

However, according to the information I had with me, a better example was to be found at one of the homes around town. We tracked down the home, and approached the gated doorway to the home. On the wall just inside the door was the figure of a man, with a large penis. As we stood at the gate, a gentleman standing near me kept looking at what I was reading. Apparently he ascertained that I spoke english, leaned over to me and pointed to the painting of the man. "Magic Penis" he said. His smile was a mile wide.

Among some of the most interesting items we saw were the baths. These are the baths for the wealthy, there are a few other, less ornate baths around town. Here there are molded plaster decorations, still faintly showing their original colors on the wall. The rooms are cool and dark compared to the outside heat, with only a small amount of sunlight filtering through the windows set high in the walls. In one of the rooms were miniature replicas of the statues which formed pillars of a massive temple of Zeus in Sicily, going around the walls.

The extent and the quality of the ruins can not be over emphasized. There is an almost endless number of interesting places to explore. There are many homes and shops you can enter, and others you can only glimpse. There are even areas where the city streets still bear ancient graffiti or advertisements. There is in fact so much, that despite the fact that we opted not to visit the museum, and spent the extra time in the city, we still were not able to enjoy it all. Add to that the fact that the city is still being actively excavated, and many other areas remain to be explored, it is a certainty that I will be revisiting this incredible place someday.