Ruins of Pompeii

Well now I really am living my dream. I have loved ancient history since I was young, and would have loved to have been an archeologist if I had the patience for such a slow precise job!!  So I booked a guided tour of Pompeii with an archeologist to get the history. 

It’s such a huge site and near impossible to see everything. We started at the marine gate on what was the shore before Vesuvius extended the coastline a little.  She showed us the old forum, and some common popular spots like a brothel and the theatres. It’s amazing to see the frescos and graffiti that are still on the walls. Several shops had campaign ads for a government post. 

So much was preserved thanks to the couple meters of rock that buried the city for a couple millennia. But there was a lot of damage when the city was rediscovered. A king his collectables so sent prisoners to tunnel around the ruins looking for the good stuff.  Luckily a more methodical approach was taken in later decades. 

There are still several areas buried under the volcanic rock. There is some excavations going on, but as some areas are really delicate they are hoping for technological advances to occur before they do anymore. 

Also, hilariously there is a big house build on the surface right in the middle of Pompeii on the rubble. Because it’s several centuries old they aren’t allowed to tear it down- which means no surveys happening below. 

Pompeii had several warnings of their impending disaster. A big earthquake caused a lot of damage a few years before, they can even see where repairs were still being done. But of course they didn’t have the knowledge or science to understand what their mountain really was. 

Lots of townspeople didn’t make it out in time, amazingly it was discovered that the stone had incased the bodies before they decomposed.  To preserve these, the hollows were filled with plaster to make casts of these poor people. The hollows also left behind left enough detail in some cases that they could tell what clothes they had on.  This helped a little in dating when the eruption was. 

Eyewitness Pliny the Younger wrote about the eruption in his later years and stated in happened in Aug 79AD. But evidence suggests it was fall due to heavier clothes worn by the people that day. Our guide also mentioned they recently found some graffiti that some one wrote with their name and the date (Oct 16th I believe) that they ate at a restaurant. So they are even more confident that it was a fall event. 

I covered about 10km in Pompeii. On ancient uneven rock paved roads!! But there was so much to see, and it was just incredible to see the ancient city that was left untouched for us to experience now. 10/10 would recommend for a visit!!!