You guessed it. I went to Pompeii.
For those of you who don't know, or never listened in history, Pompeii is a Roman town which was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD.
It isn't quite the disaster that is made out, from what my guide told me. Several years earlier, a massive earthquake had ruined the city, and many of the 20,000 residents had been evacuated; only 2,000 remained and when the eruption happened, the city had just finished rebuilding itself to it's former glory, hence the beautiful state of the city.
Many people (including I) think that the city is so well preserved because it was covered in lava. This isn't the case. Pompeii sits just a top a small hill, and so the lava didn't reach the city limits. The ash, and the gasses, are what put Pompeii to bed.
Many people left the city almost instantly once the ash began to fall. The eruption happened at noon and by 4pm, all but 50 people were left in the city. Those 50 people were town officials and business men who could not leave. Within two days the ash had covered the city in up to 6 metres of ash. The sheer weight of the ash on roofs made the weak wooden structures collapse; the walls obviously still remain.
Believe it or not, Pompeii remained undiscovered until 1594 when an archeologist found what is now a very small house outside the city which turned out to be the office of the city cemetery. He reported the find, but not until 1687 did the entirety and scale of his discovery become apparent. The city fills nearly 100 hectares with only about 40 unearthed, or unashed.
Archeologists have excavated over the years and essentially found a perfectly preserved Roman city. There are perfect paintings (frescos) on walls and ceilings, and pots and pans left exactly how they were when the eruption happened.
It's quite like someone just all of a sudden made all the people disappear in the middle of their lives. Regular people just going about their business and then all of a sudden they were told to pack their things, get on chariots and leave.
Indeed as I mentioned before, some people did not leave and their fate has since become famous world wide. When, in 1925, archeologists were surveying the ground, they found voids under the ash. Luckily, for they did not know what these were, they injected liquid plaster into these voids, let it set, and then removed the surrounding ash. What remained were bones, I'm exactly the same position they had fallen. While the flesh decomposed over thousands of years, the imprints of their faces are horrendously human. One even shows a look of pure panic. The most memorable of these plaster casts is one woman, which lays, on her front with her arms out in front of her as if she has just fallen over running away. She is now turned over and you can see how she has one shoe on, not two. Her face is detailed enough to show that she has succumb to the poisonous gases which suffocated anyone who dared not to leave.
The rest of the excavations are incredibly beautiful. Many of them have been restored to exactly the way they would have looked in 79AD. The bakers shows the ovens and grindstone in the courtyard. Outside the public baths there is even a 'fast food joint' with a marble counter with holes in which still had their lids. They found wood remains found under these holes which indicates that they had food in which was kept warm to sell. Sort of like McDonald's.
Except not shit.
The incredible thing about the shops and houses is that you can still see perfectly how people lived. Small sinks in corners of butchers shops and little marble counters in the fishmongers. Even the grooves in the door way where the shutters were pulled across.
The only purely brick building, which hence survived the weight of the ash, was the theatre. It remained perfectly preserved, candles included. It was something. It held 5,000 people when full and many reckon this is where the city folk would have assembled to be told of the evacuations.
The roads, as my tour guide in Rome had told me, were exactly the right width. 5 steps. However, Pompeii was different. It was one of the major cities along the coast which didn't have an underground sewerage network. Because of this, the Romans adapted the roads to suit. The roads were set half a metre down into the earth so water could flow along them, and at cross roads there were stepping stones for pedestrians to cross the roads, similar to zebra crossings. The stepping stones we're the same size all over the empire, two inches smaller than the width of the wheels on chariots. There were perfect grooves either side of the stones where the chariots ran over the stones.
Such a lovely place, but incredibly hot. Definitely didn't help my sun burn
That's be all blogged out tonight... See you tomorrow!
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