Saturday, 14 October, Ancient Pompeii, then on to Rome

Written 14 December 2023

Another couple of nice details of my hotel room—small recessed ceiling paintings.

Same breakfast routine as the day before (including the infuriatingly slow seating), with the addition of having to have our bags packed and ready outside our rooms by 6:30 am. Anna made the rounds while we ate breakfast, putting Tauck tags on them. At all subsequent stops, we were able to leave our packed bags inside our rooms (near the door and not near anything we didn't want the porters to take), which was better for security.

As we assembled in the hotel's dooryard to walk to the bus, I spotted this unusual potted citrus. It's called a "Buddha's hand" because each of the segments of the fruit has its own exterior skin, making the fruit look like a cluster of fingers. I've read about them, and seen pictures, but I'd never actually seen one in person before.

We had to be ready to go at 7:30 am. Everybody grumbled but had to agree by the end of the day that it had been a good idea.

The drive from Sorrento to Pompeii wasn't long, and Anna occupied the time on the bus by showing us a BBC docudrama (featuring Jim Carter and Tim Piggott-Smith) called Pompeii: The Last Day that explained a lot about the sequence of events and, for example, why Pompeii was so much better preserved than other cities wiped out by volcanic eruptions.

Most importantly, lava never covered the city. When Vesuvius blew (on 24 Augusts, 79 AD)

Pliny the Elder, uncle of the Younger, was an admiral as well as a scientist. He had traveled and knew a volcano when he saw one, referring to it as a "fire mountain." He sailed his ship across to try to bring off survivors, but he perished in the attempt.

Our early start put us were among the first to arrive at Pompeii, so we had it mostly to ourselves because we entered just as it opened, and then our local guide took us through the tour “backwards,” starting with the museum that’s usually done last, then making a beeline for the farthest point on the circuit and working our way back. By the time we made it back to the entrance, the place was teeming, with more buses lined up outside. Starting with the museum also gave us first crack at the museum’s restrooms, then at the end, Tauck got us (by special arrangement) free use of those at a restaurant outside the gates (cleaner than the public ones) before we reboarded the bus.

Walking from the outer entrance gates toward the entrance to the museum, we got this good view of the giant statue of Daedalus that stands on the city's outer walls. It wasn't there back in the day but was left behind as a gift to Italy, at the end of an exhibition of works by the late Polish artist Igor Mitoraj, which took place in Pompeii in 2016. The two-toned column to the right of it is inside the city. I think the lower, darker section is original and the upper, lighter section is restoration.

In the right-hand photo, you can see that much of the outer wall is covered by scaffolding, where the walls are being restored and reinforced because of damage dating to WWII bombing. The wall had seven gates in it; the most important was that facing the port.

Also on that walk, I got photos of several interesting plants, including this common myrtle (Myrtus communis), in fruit, and this large pomegranate (Punica granatum), also bearing ripening fruit.

Here's one of the more family-friendly arrays of recovered artifacts in the museum; the large central object is a metal stove with a figure of Poseidon on top. I have closer shots of some of the others that are not suitable for display here, because they feature—prominently and explicitly—the town's symbol, the penis. The Romans chose Priapus as a symbol of prosperity, so it became the symbol of the city, the best good luck charm. It's also featured extensively, in all sizes and many materials, in the souvenir shops just outside the gates.

At the left is a segment of lively wall decor.

The museum also contained a lot of marble statuary in varying states of preservation. Apparently, Pompeii was well stocked with it, dating from before 90 BC, when the Romans conquered the city and took it from the Greeks.

These two photos are of casts of victims of the disaster. These people were buried, alive or dead, in ash and cinders, which became calcified and solidified around them. The soft parts decayed away over the ages, leaving person-shaped cavities containing only skeletons. The excavators poured liquid plaster into those cavities, then dug the casts out. The guide reminded us that the actual skeletons are still inside, embedded in the plaster. In one (not pictured here), the mouth is open, and you can see the actual teeth still in place inside.

The city was oriented east-west for the sunlight. We were told that the site covers 163 acres, but I'm not sure whether that was the size of the city or just the part that's been excavated (which is pretty large; we had time to walk around only a small part of it). The population is said to have been about 20,000, since the amphitheater outside the walls was built to accommodate that many. The city was built of lime rock, Carrara marble, and volcanic rock (which the locals didn't realize was volcanic). Many structures were also built of brick, which was then covered with marble or plaster.

The amphitheatre was free, so everyone could attend, even slaves. The smaller theatre was paying; it was for educated people who understood Greek.

The streets doubled as rain gutters, so the sidewalks were raised, for the convenience of pedestrians. The photo at the right shows a stepping-stone crosswalk. The bright white spots in the pavement, which I initially took to be debris, were placed deliberately when the street was paved. The shiny white broken bits of glazed pottery had the same function as the reflectors embedded in modern streets along the center line. They reflected moonlight light and that of torches and lanterns, making it easier for people to follow the route of the street in the dark. Some sidewalks were covered by colonnades.

Here we enter the forum, which was centered on a large temple of Apollo, a large basilica that doubled as the courthouse. The columns of Apollo are lava stone painted white to look like marble. I think the guide said the temple was built around 400 BC, when the Greeks started to be allied with the Romans.

As you can see at the right, the forum was pretty big! The square blocks set in the ground here and there would have been the bases for statues. It was paved in travertine and marble; some of the blocks have been replaced in modern times to make walking across it easier.

The first excavations were in 1748, but systematic archeological exploration began in 1861–1863. Italy was united in 1860, and excavations were revolutionized because that was when the Italians took over the site, which had been under Spanish domination.

I didn't catch whether the monumental centaur was part of the original statuary or a later addition.

These open alcoves facing the forum were probably shops. The city's shops had wide entrances and sliding doors; you can see the grooves where the doors fit. Many were two-storied; you can still see the holes where the beams fit into the walls to support the second story, which was used for storage.

Rome had chosen to make Pompeii a trading center and Naples a military base. Pompeii was very successful and prosperous until 62 AD, when it was struck by a very damaging earthquake. Much of the population left for a time, but then drifted back and started rebuilding. By 79 AD, the city was in the midst of a major building boom, and trade was once again thriving.

Tiberius ruled the empire from Capri. Nero married a Pompeii girl. The city's furniture and the utensils changed; it was no longer just prosperous but beginning to be aristocratic.

At the left here is a street sign. "Reg" and "Ins" were probably abbreviations for, say, east-west streets and north-south streets, which were numbered. The label was supplemented by a relief of two guys carrying an amphora on a pole between them. Maybe this was Wine-merchant Street.

It's a smaller street; each crosswalk had only one stepping stone.

Some of the gates opened into the courtyards of residences. The entryway at the left was paved with mosaics.

According to my notes, the door at the right is that of the Casa de la Fontana Grande.

At some of the intersections were public fountains, presumably for drinking water, spilling into stone basins.

And at the right here is what would have been a food shop. The holes in the counter would have held cooking pots fired from below.

Here's another food shop, better preserved, showing three cooking holes, and a mostly intact marble counter.

Against the back wall was this brick structure that might have been an oven and/or flattop or warming surface.

Our destination, at our farthest point from the front gate was this large and sumptuously decorated house, the Domus Vettiorum. It was the home of two brothers (Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus), very successful wine merchants (freed slaves, some say), who had come to the city after the earthquake.

At the right are some of the wall paintings in the entryway.

The house was discovered in 1860 and opened to the public in 1960, but less of it had been excavated then. It started to suffer too much foot traffic, so it was closed until 2000 after much more of it was opened. The house is 9,000 square feet and a whole block long.

An information panel displayed a reconstruction of the decor on one of the entryway's walls.

Another wall bore this handsome mosaic.

The room decorated in red was the dining room, and I liked this mosaic (in another room) of red mullet and eels.

The area has been replanted to look as it might have when the house was occupied.

These two photos show sections of the original lead piping installed to irrigate the garden. Every house had a cistern to collect rain water for the household's use. One of the original valves also survives, but I didn't get a photo.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the house is that the brothers rented a room—a nice warm one off the kitchen—to a prostitute (her name is known, but I didn't catch it), who plied her trade there. She charged 2 dinari (the Roman currency accepted throughout the empire). Because many of her clients would have been illiterate, or even speak other languages (Pompeii was a major seaport, remember), she had a graphic menu of positions painted on the walls for their convenience in indicating their wishes.

In fact, Priapus and other sexual themes are depicted all over the house . . . .

After our tour, we had free time outside the gates to visit the half acre of souvenir stands. As I mentioned above, although the variety was huge, by far the most common and apparently popular items were detailed, anatomically correct depictions of penises. We didn't buy any.

Standing by was a French style "little white train" (this one red). Clearly it wasn't allowed inside Pompeii proper, but it probably circulated outside, ferrying tourists from the parking lot, hotels, etc.

I feel as though this account is pretty sketchy and disorganized, but let me say here that it Pompeii was truly an amazing thing to see and to learn about. If you ever get the chance to go, don't pass it up!

Lunch was at a catering service and wedding venue called Tiberius, located just outside the town, and the set menu was really good. Outdoors, they were setting up for a wedding, so we reached the dining room through this long tented walkway.

We started with this lovely salad of Bibb lettuce, arugula, and grilled vegetables, festooned with carrot ribbons.

That was followed by pasta with a sauce made from those special little long-keeping cherry tomatoes we'd seen the day before. Terrific flavor. That was topped with herbed ricotta cream and fresh basil. Yummy.

Dessert was a confection of crumbs, coconut, ricotta, and honey, I think. Tasty anyway . . . .

My photos from the bus during the trip to Rome weren't very successful, but the ride was punctuated by a stop at our first Autogrill, the Stuckey's/Busy Bee/Buc-ee's of Italy.

Besides the usual dazzling array of candy (of a pretty upscale assortment), all kinds of salty snacks, cookies, stuffed animals, popcorn (shown here being sold in plastic bottles), metal and plastic toys, and souvenir mugs with many names on them (which, because it's Italy, were sized to hold about 3 tbsp each and came with saucers), they had a wide variety of cooking kits—lidded metal pails filled with spicy seasonings or "flavors of the forest," packages of pasta with pouches of tomato sauce and cheese, sets of two-foot tall pepper and salt grinders (with a variety of peppers and a variety of salts), whole cheeses and salamis, big plastic jars of dried porcini mushrooms (shown here at the right).

Here's a display of Italian chocolates with almond filling and pouches of marrons glacés (candied checknuts) framed in a fuzzy stuffed animals.

The ever-present Chupa Chups, little spherical lollipops, were available individually and in bulk. Gigantic ones were also displayed on special tree-shaped stands. I'd always wondered about those. Did people actual want and buy lolliops the size of soccer balls? Well somebody had torn the outer wrapper off one, so the mystery was solved. They are not giant lollipops but plastic spheres containing assortments of the normal size pops. In fact, each giant pop contains only about 4.5 oz of actual candy.

The true marvel of the place, though, was the hot and cold prepared food on offer. At the left here is a stack of cafeteria trays, each preset with a bag containing cutlery, napkins, a bread roll, and a paper placemat with step-by-step directions for passing through the line.

This appetizing array of cold starters includes prosciutto and burrata, beef carpaccio with Parmesan, pasta salads with feta, Niçoise salads, and fruit and veggie assortments.

At the next station, you could get a bacon cheeseburger with fries or a steak with sautéed veggies.

Then on one tray, three kinds of sausage, ribs, or chicken wings and on the other slabs of grilled salmon with grilled veggies.

A third tray held crispy, breaded schnitzels (probably pork), and a nearby case displayed all manner of sandwiches below and donuts and pastries above.

Wow.

As we continued our drive toward Rome, Anna told us a little about Naples, which we flew into, drove out of, and bypassed on our way north but did not actually visit:

• Naples is Europe's most densely populated city, and street crime is very high there.
• Even though more people in Naples are unemployed than are employed, they still seem like the happiest people Anna knows.
• The word "Naples" ("Napoli" in Italian) come from the Greek "Nea-" (new) and "polis" (city). Like Pompeii, it was a Greek colony before it was taken over by the Romans in the 4th century BC.
• after WWII, Naples passed a referendum saying that, yes, they would like to become the 51st state of the U.S. (actually, at the time, it would have been the 49th state, but we knew what she meant).
• The Aeniid was finished in Naples.
• A few years ago, when they passed a seat-belt law, somebody in Naples immediately produced t-shirts with seat belts printed on them, and they sold out in a day.
• In 1987, Naples lost to Milan in soccer (called cancho here), and they've never gotten over it.

Out hotel was the W Rome. The name apparently derives from the chain's motto: "whatever, whenever, wherever." I found it a little odd, though, that the nameplate on the concierge's desk read "Whatever"; the reception desk said "Whenever." The place is hilariously hipster-trendy. As Anna predicted on our way there, all the strapping young male staff that emerged to unload our luggage were "freshly manscaped," impeccably dressed in black suits or matching black t-shirts (according to rank), with carefully coifed hair and perfectly trimmed beards. I did spot a few female staff; the young woman on the concierge desk seemed less pretentious and more helpful.

For dinner, Anna led us around a corner and a block or two to the Angolo dell' Aurora, where we had an à la carte (as opposed to fixed group menu) dinner. David, predictably, started with a plate of prosciutto. I, equally predictably, went for the sauté of mussels and clams.

For the pasta course, I chose carbonara, and David got Emilia.

I followed with another "fritura" of shrimp and squid, and I think David had saltimboca—the classic dish of veal with ham and cheese, usually rolled, but this one served flat.

All excellent!

Finally, here's our not very successful attempt at a photo outside the restaurant before we walked home.