Day 42 - [N]aples (Pompeii and Herculaneum)

The devastation caused by Vesuvius

I decided a week or so ago, that if I was going to get to see all the things in Naples that I ‘had’ to see, I should use tours to make sure that those visits happened. Consequently, I’d selected two tours, one for Sunday to visit Herculaneum and Pompeii, which included a visit to Vesuvius itself, and the other for Tuesday, which will visit Sorrento, Positano, and Amalfi (all in one day). Today, being Sunday meant the Vesuvius tour. Both tours mean an early start, today being collected from the Ramada Hotel (about 20 minutes walk from my AirBNB) at 8:30 am.

After the expected poor night’s sleep, I was up in good time to make a light breakfast from the things left for that purpose by my AirBNB hosts and get to the Ramada by 8:10 am. I was met there by Luca, my guide/driver for the day and we met the other folks on the same tour, an English brother and sister, Luke and Mollie. Luke and Mollie are from Manchester and have the classic Mancunian accent. Luca, from Naples, has very good English but a strong Italian accent. Some of our early conversations in the car took a little working through even though they were all in English.

Luca drove us, quickly, to our first stop, Herculaneum. He explained that we would arrive just as the place was opening and so would have the place almost to ourselves. He told us a bit about the Vesuvius explosion in 79 AD and how it had a different effect on Herculaneum than on Pompeii. Pompeii was first buried in ash, then the pyroclastic material buried it, basically boiling the already suffocated inhabitants in their ash encasing. Herculaneum didn’t get covered in ash (wind direction, I suppose) and so it was affected by the eruption differently. If I understood Luca correctly (and this was one part where the accent was confusing the message, I’m sure), the pyroclastic ejecta flash-cooked Herculaneum, even allowing wood to be preserved (as charcoal) because the intensity of the heat was sealed into the buildings so quickly. (Anyway, that’s how I got it. I have on my list of to-dos to research what happened there in some detail to put my mind at rest about it all.)

Vesuvius, looms over Herculaneum

When we got to Herculaneum it was just as Luca had predicted. We were essentially the first one’s in the gate and there were only a handful of other visitors for the majority of the time we were wandering around in the town.

Herculaneum is a fascinating place. The roads and houses are remarkably well-preserved, though there is evidence everywhere of new works to ‘complete’ some of the structures. In an archaeological sense, I’m not sure how perfect this is, but from a presentational sense it is really helpful to complete the picture of ‘roman’ life in the first century.

Panorama of the Herculaneum site

Herculaneum was built on a slope, covered by lava

Gardens established in former public squares

Olive grove in a former public square

The three of us wandered around as a little group, admiring the roman ruins and talking about a variety of stuff. Mollie and Luke were excellent company and very patient with an old Aussie’s uncontrollable urge to offer my opinion/insights on what we were seeing. The Herculaneum exhibit is not signposted/explained at all (that I saw) and we didn’t have a guide or audio guide with us, so it was a bit difficult to make a sensible ‘story’ out of what we were seeing. Consequently, I just tried to absorb the uniqueness of the place, having seen roman ruins before (on Australian TV). The photos below are just a selection of the too many that I took. I’ve tried to select ones that offer special highlights. 

House interior showing finishes	So much of the mosaic floor is preserved. The mosaic tiles are so small! And the floor has buckled during? the eruption. The frescos on the walls are quite well preserved (remember, many have been preserved in the museum). Luca had explained that red on the frescos was originally yellow, and yellow was originally white, the colours being affected by the intense heat.	Another house interior – the roof is new, including a plastic skylight cover
Preservation works are continuing (though not while we were there on a Sunday)	Evidence that these were two-storey houses (joist holes in the walls)	More extensively preserved mosaic flooring
Fresco designs in a bedroom?	A main living area. The central marble bath/pond showed up everywhere	An example of the preserved wood in Herculaneum – a bed frame
This mosaic fresco was the best preserved wall fresco I saw on site	The wall and ceiling plaster is remarkable	Another wonderful floor, heavily buckled
A marble public water trough	Wall buckling, showing how the wall structure stood up to the eruption	Remarkably preserved colourful wall frescos

Herculaneum was definitely worth the visit. While there was a lot of new elements in many of the buildings, reinforcing the structure or closing the envelope, the amount of original structure and decoration was really wonderful to see. We finished walking around the site inside the time that Luca had given us, so we waited for a few minutes till he returned to collect us from the front gate. Then he drove us, quickly again, up the hill to Vesuvius. He was explaining that the mountain was much bigger before it blew its top (though the Pompeii exhibition in the museum said that it was actually lower, and built up with the eruption, so, whatever). He also explained that the volcanic soil was wonderfully fertile especially for tomatoes (apparently, 3000 varieties of cherry tomatoes grow in the area), lemons, and olives. He also explained that he could only take us so far up the mountain, then we’d have to walk the rest of the way to see the top. (That wasn’t in the tour ads!) Finally, he pointed out that Vesuvius is officially an active volcano, so our walking up it was at our own risk. Oh, and even though it was quite a clear day, the view at the top might be obscured by low cloud (see the photo from Herculaenum above). I mean, he wasn’t really selling it!

In due course, we got out of the car and took the ticket that Luca provided to enter the park that surrounds the top of Vesuvius and started the climb. Just another tourist day in Europe for me, climbing something! This part of the tour was really all about the views over Naples and Castellademare, then the caldera itself.

Panorama of Naples from (near) the top of Vesuvius

Naples from Vesuvius – note the low cloud ;)	Castellademare from Vesuvius
First view of the caldera	The caldera from the other side

Souvenirs available on Vesuvius

There were a couple of amusing interludes while we waited for Luca to come back up the hill from the parking lot to collect us. We had a ‘large’ cappucino, which was served with a (small) single shot and ended up being just a cup of hot frothy milk – very disappointing. Some guy in a drab olive-green Lamborghini SUV showed up at the top of the drive and parked where he liked. As he got out of the car, he was accosted by the police in attendance (there’s always at least one police officer at tourist spots in Naples, it seems) and told “you can’t park here, mate”. He clearly didn’t believe it but eventually, reluctantly, got back into his car and drove off, very slowly, after dropping his wife (a tragic simulcra of “Real Housewives of Naples”) and then making a parking spot for himself 50m down the road, where authorised vehicles were parked. Couldn’t have been a more archtypical rich wanker. And while we were sitting in front of the concessionaire’s stand drinking our very disappointing coffee, I looked more carefully at the display of souvenirs on offer. The phalluses were pretty jarring. Later, I was looking at the fridge magnet display and saw one that was labelled “Pompeii” and had a graphic image of an ash-covered couple in flagrante delicto doggy style. I’ve subsequently done 30 seconds of Google research and it seems that Pompeii had many frescos of sexual activity, possibly several phallus statues, and Herculaneum had a magnificent marble statue of Pan having sex with a goat! (Look it up, it’s a magnificent statue!) Evidently, that’s a legitimate theme for souvenirs of Vesuvius and its surrounds.

Luca drove us down Vesuvius and directly, and quickly again, to Pompeii. We were told that this would be time where we could get some lunch, and then wander around Pompeii until he collected us in the mid-afternoon. Armed with that plan, that’s what we did. The most notable aspects of lunch were that we had pizza because we’re in Naples, Luke seemingly inhaled the thing (which was ‘large’ in Australian pizzerias) in one breath (reminded me of a much younger me), and the wait staff seemed to be genuinely put out that we were asking them to serve us lunch, for which we would pay. I’ve noticed this in Naples where I haven’t anywhere else. The hospitality staff all give the vibe of ‘I’d really rather not’. Even the welcoming ones can be pretty diffident.

Pompeii is quite different to Herculaneum, as many people had told me. First, it’s huge! Apparently the largest preserved roman town and that would be no surprise. The model in the museum showed the extent of the exhibit/site but I hadn’t really understood what that meant until we started to walk around it. Compared to Herculaneum, it was vast. However, none of the buildings are in anything like the same level of repair as those in Herculaneum. There’s been no attempt to remake any of the structures (there are some preservative structures in place; e.g. columns wrapped in a steel frame). The vast proportion of the site is literally ruins. Again, we wandered around without a guide or an audio guide, making guesses about where to go based on the map we collected at the gate when buying the entry ticket. I took lots of photos again, of course. The selection below tries to summarise the whole experience.

A public forum	The main theatre	The agora
Preserved marble floor	Partial collonade in the agora, the buildings around this space would have been huge	Preserved bodies on display, and fresco
Skeletal remains	Luca had told us a story about losing a Mexican ‘grandfather’ in Pompeii once when escorting a tour group. He then said that he wondered if the bones they’d recently discovered in Pompeii might not be from antiquity, but the Mexican tourist! These skeletons are unique in discoveries at Pompeii (and imply burials to me) because all the ash-encased bodies recovered from Pompeii are actually carefully made models, cast from concrete infills of ash-encased hollows in the Pompeii dig. Luca explained that the actual bodies were essentially boiled away by the pyroclastic material inside the ash-encasement that would have suffocated the people. When the archaeologists digging Pompeii first discovered a hollow area, they pumped it full of concrete (he said) and then later made plaster models from these in-situ cast moulds.
House frontage in Pompeii	House interior showing consistent central bath/pond	Shrine/fountain in house
Street scene in Pompeii	Unfortunately, this is the only photo I took of a road that shows something that I found very interesting (on reflection). You’ll note that the kerbs on the road are quite high. Frequently, there would be stepping stones running across the road, at the same height as the kerb, to allow pedestrians to cross a road without stepping down onto the road surface. (In the photo, in the top street left corner, behind the guy in the yellow jacket.) They had to be stepping stones to allow the wheels of chariots on the road to pass between them. Reflecting on that, I’m convinced that this was the model for our modern zebra crossings.
Preserved frescos	Example of gardens in a house layout	The smaller amphitheatre in Pompeii

We ended up much further into Pompeii than we thought when the time came for us to return to where Luca had dropped us off for the ride home. So, we quick-walked back, but were a bit disoriented and made a couple of poor turns before suddenly popping up beside the small amphitheatre that I had wanted to visit as we left. Anyway, we ended up back with Luca almost on time. He took us back to Naples, quickly again, and dropped us at the Ramada. (I keep emphasising ‘quickly’ because Luca was, for example, doing 130km/h+ in a sign-posted 100km/h zone, with one hand on the steering wheel and a very casual attitude to lane-holding. He wasn’t unique in Naples traffic, but it was a little surprising to me for a tour vehicle.)

I’d been discussing with Mollie and Luke having dinner together at a restaurant that had been recommended by my AirBNB host. They’d agreed to the idea, but when we started doing the coordination after being dropped by Luca, we discovered that the place wasn’t open on a Sunday night. So, we set the dinner date for Monday night and went our separate ways for the evening. Luke and Mollie had really lifted my enjoyment of the day-long tour, being excellent company, and interested in what we were seeing in a similar way to me.

I returned to my AirBNB, noting the different vibe on the streets I’d now walked a few times, given the Sunday evening crowd. After getting back to the flat, I pfaffed around a bit, then headed back out to get some dinner. I’d walked past a little place that looked a bit quiet and thought that might be worth trying. And it was. I had fried eggplant balls (really nice!), spaghetti carbonara (very good, definitely authentic), and an apple tart I was told was a local dish (really nice too!).

Buildings are even more drab when they’re closed up

Smaller crowds on the shopping street near the flat

View from dinner at Trattoria Pisano

Daily facts: Location: [N]aples Temp: 20 Weather: Sunny, with patches of cloud