Pompeii Part 1 - wandering through the ruins

After another very long drive, and views of Mt Vesuvius in the distance, we arrived at Pompeii. What a profoundly sad, moving place it was. 

We had seen the BBC video ‘Last days of Pompeii’ on the coach and found out what a thriving, quite sophisticated, large society it had been, how dreadful was the unusual kind of eruption that occurred, and what terrible deaths the people suffered. And we all learned that ironically, had the wind been blowing in the opposite direction as it usually did, it would have been Naples that was wiped out, not Pompeii.

We also discovered how ‘Pliny the Elder' had crossed the Bay of Naples with some of his men to rescue some people, and instead died in the horrors that followed the initial eruption. When Roman soldiers arrived to assist any survivors, they realised that no-one could have survived and left the place as it was. The city laid buried for many centuries until rediscovered in about the 1700s.

It was fortuitous that Pliny’s young nephew, who had remained behind, was able to record all his observations of those terrible days, which for many centuries were disbelieved. He has now been vindicated as a very accurate observer: vulcanologists have now recorded other occurrences of this kind of eruption, though none so devastating as that was. Even now, Mt Vesuvius still erupts, the last eruption being in the 1940s. There is great fear that it is due to erupt again, which will cause a huge loss of life in a most terrible way, as hundreds of thousands of people have settled on its slopes to make use of the very fertile volcanic soil, and even more live at its base. Naples itself could be at risk.

We wandered in silence through what ruins have been uncovered, in awe of the way these people lived, with their government buildings, running water, heating systems, roadways, the bath-house, the Roman villa with its beautiful mosaic floor, rows of shops, including a bakery with an outdoor oven, and so forth. And only about 20 per cent of the ancient city is uncovered; the rest remains under the present town. The large stones that made the roadways showed where carriages of residents and of the many visitors had driven over them, the stones along the most popular routes covered in deep ruts.

It was very hard to see the plaster cast of the child and of the dog that had been chained up. People’s bodies were basically vaporised; pouring plaster into the spaces inside the solidified ash and lava, and uncovering the plaster when it set, revealed the bodies that had been buried within those spaces. This process was sparked when archaeologists were trying to solve the puzzle of why there seemed to be large ‘bubbles' within the lava. They no doubt were shocked to discover the cause. 

I will let my photos speak for themselves. They will have to be in the next post unfortunately. I am having no end of trouble this time. This is my fourth attempt to post this story ever several hours.