Chris & Kelly's Travel Adventures

Today is our last full day in Sorrento, and we spent it exploring Pompeii and Herculaneum.  

These next few photos are of a private bathhouse that was located at dockside.  Before the volcano blast of 79 AD, Pompeii was a waterfront city.  The volcano moved the coastline by several miles.

Chris has done some more reading after visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum to try to put some of the events in order to better understand why preservation of artifacts are so different between the two cities. 

Around 62 AD, a huge earthquake flattened much of Pompeii and many residents fled and never returned, and much of Pompeii had to be rebuilt.

So there is no accurate count of Pompeii's actual population at the time Mt. Vesuvius erupted.  The guess is somewhere between 20,000-30,000- although only 2,000 bodies have been discovered to-date. 

An eye-witness account (from Pliny the elder lived on the point of Naples, some 26 miles away) claimed the first thing to happen was basically a mushroom cloud (he described it as umbrella pine tree), then ash and pyroclastic gases covered much of Pompeii over a 3-day period, in some cases up to 60 meters deep, poisoning and suffocating all living things. 

By contrast, Herculaneum, which was closer and on a steeper slope, escaped the initial and realitively gradual ashfall from the sky, was suddenly smothered by a river of hot volcanic mud.  The effect was to shave off the upper stories of the buildings but to better preserve the lower areas in rapidly solidifying rock.  Only about a quarter has been excavated because the current city was built above it. 

Both cities continue to be excavated and discovered, but it is unlikely that Herculaneum will ever be fully exposed.

Archeologists have recovered over 9,000 pieces of pottery from Pompeii, most in excellent condition. The "bodies," however, are actually castings  created by pouring plaster into the cavities created when the bodies decomposed inside the hardened ash. This is why in Pompeii you can see what looks like complete forms, but in Herculaneum there are only petrified bones.

The roads of Pompeii were built with stepping stones so people could cross the street without putting their feet into sewage, yet carts (with high clearance) could travel down the street also.  Two stepping stones indicated one way, three or more were for 2-way traffic.  On 1-way roads you could tell which way to travel by the animal signs on the side of buildings... just follow the nose of the animal. :)

Many finely detailed mosaic floors were uncovered and decently preserved.

Herculaneum

The photograph below is of a restaurant.   Food was presented in pots, buffet style.  Pompeii and Herculaneum had many such establishments that we would consider fast food (as in "food to go").  Some restaurants also offered lodging and even "other services" as indicated in a very detailed pictograph menu.