When I was around 8 years old, I remember sitting on the floor in our Connecticut living room and being totally engrossed in a documentary about Pompeii. (Yes, I was that nerdy.) This was the very early 70’s, and our big, clunky TV set needed to have its color adjusted all the time so that people’s faces didn’t turn green, and the sky didn’t get as orange as a nameless idiot’s bad comb over. So, for me, the ruins of Pompeii had a sickly pink hue. I was hesitant to adjust it for fear of making it worse. But it hardly mattered. It was still fascinating.
It felt like I went to Pompeii that day. I remember being frustrated that I could only “go” where the camera went. When the program ended, I felt as though I had been cast out, and I knew I had to “go back there” someday.
One thing is for certain: I contracted the travel bug thanks to that documentary. On that day, I resolved that I would explore the world and see how other people lived. I would learn everything I could about how many ways there were to be human.
I have been obsessed with travel ever since. I’ve been to 23 countries. One of my greatest regrets is that there is so much more of the world that I want to see, but I won’t have the time, the finances, or the physical ability to see it all. But at the same time, that means I savor every drop of travel I do get to have. It’s my reason for being. So any trip to Italy, for me, had to include Pompeii.
This being a significant part of our Italy trip, we didn’t want to miss anything. We decided to splurge on a tour guide through a company called Walks of Italy. We chose that company because the guides were purported to be actual archeologists.
That really excited me, because, yes, I really am that gullible. I was imagining this old guy, with sun-blasted skin and scarred hands, dressed like Indiana Jones, telling us all the inside secrets about Pompeii that only the archeologists know. I was expecting to be handed pearls of ancient Pompeiian wisdom.
What we got, instead, was a grad student who was quite knowledgeable, no doubt about it, but one look at her long, manicured, lacquered nails and her soft hands made me realize that they had never been in dirt in their lives, and never would be. Of course that’s what we got. No serious archeologist was going to waste his or her time giving tours to crowds of tourists. Silly me.
We were in a medium-sized group, surrounded by dozens of other tour groups from cruises, schools, what have you. It was noisy. So that we’d be able to make the most of her narrative, she handed us all earphones so we would be able to hear her talk. You gotta love technology!
Until you don’t. It turns out that my earphones (even after I traded them for new ones) were only effective if I stayed within 5 feet of her, and she walked fast. And she wouldn’t slow down for anyone or anything. She was a force of nature.
Guidebooks urge you to wear shoes with good ankle support when visiting Pompeii for a reason. The cobblestones are extremely uneven. So picture me, scrambling over uneven ground across the whole of Pompeii in a desperate attempt to get my money’s-worth out of this tour. To say my heart was pounding is putting it mildly. At one point I nearly fell flat on my face. How ironic it would have been if the one place that had given me the travel bug also turned out to be the place that killed me.
Based on the notes I wrote that evening, our guide didn’t really provide any profound insights that we couldn’t have obtained ourselves from a guidebook. It was nice to have someone who knew her way around, but honestly, it wasn’t necessary. Yes, the site is huge, but there are plenty of maps and guidebooks. I would urge you to fly solo.
If there’s one particular house or building that interests you so much that you would like to learn more, simply linger there, pretending to consult your map, and you’re bound to overhear an English-speaking tour guide pass by sooner or later. Eavesdrop, surreptitiously, for that one location. What are they going to do, take away your birthday?
Even at a stumbling sprint, we did manage to see a lot and take quite a few pictures. I wasn’t expecting to see so many outstanding frescos that have barely faded with time. Some of the mosaics were incredibly intact, despite this area being prone to earthquakes. And the plaster casts of the people were so detailed that you could see the patterns of their clothing and shoes. You got the feeling that you were seeing a day in the life of Pompeiians, frozen in time, courtesy of Mt. Vesuvius.
What I’ll do now is present you with some of the photos that Dear Husband and I took. I’ve put them into what I feel are logical groups, and I’ll expound upon each group, but please don’t assume they’re in touring order. I’ve ordered them by theme, not by location. Navigation has never been my strong suit. Consult your guidebook for that. And we’re walking…
Once past the turnstiles, we were treated to a lot of sweeping views of the ruins from along the site’s elevated edges. (And no, the ruins are definitely not pink. Kids today are spoiled with their HDTVs.) It wasn’t until that moment that it truly dawned on me how vast this archeological park is. It was a fairly large town, with 10-20,000 residents. At its height, it covered about 170 acres. The archeological park is about 2/3rds of the ancient city. That’s a lot of walking. Many of the buildings are not publicly accessible, though.
We did get to wander through several houses that were in various states of preservation. I’m actually glad I didn’t visit before 2020, because that’s when the park administration decided to replant many of the gardens in the more opulent homes in the manner in which they would most likely have appeared in their heyday. Those gardens were stunning.
It’s so much easier to imagine a garden if there are actually plants there, rather than gazing at a sand-blasted hellscape. Greenery definitely improves the ambience, as do fountains and sculptures. Take, for example, this elaborately tiled fountain in the appropriately named House of the Large Fountain. It was large enough for bathing, and it gave people a pleasant place to gather on a hot day, I’m sure.
And here’s the peristyle garden in the house of Marcus Lucretius. Can’t you just imagine people gathering for a barbecue here?
One of the most popular areas in the park is the House of the Vettii. I know it was one of my favorites. The Vettii were freed slaves that had become successful merchants and had risen to the upper middle class. They had a well-appointed home to show for it. The floor plan below shows an atrium (where two safes were found that held their wealth), and a large, pillared garden, both of which were open to the sky.
Every room had elaborate frescos, as seen below. The entrance hall had an erotic image that was so over the top as to make me blink. I’m not showing it here, but if you feel like blinking, too, just Google Priapus Weighing His Phallus Pompeii. That one, for many years, was covered up by a wooden panel, and if an adult male tourist wanted to see it, they had to ask. It was off limits to everyone else. If a fresco can make an Italian blush, that’s really saying something. But he and his phallus are out there for all to see in these modern times.
There were other rooms with beautiful frescos of a less erotic nature, but one room, in particular, was full of erotic imagery. The sad part about this is that we know from the graffiti that it was the room of a slave of Greek origin named Eutychis. You’d think that freed slaves would have compassion enough not to exploit, humiliate, and abuse their own slaves, but apparently not.
Eutychis was a domestic servant, but she was also expected to give herself to anyone willing to pay the sum of two asses (the currency, not the animal), which was the going rate for a prostitute at that time, and would have been the equivalent of the price of a couple of glasses of cheap wine. So she would have been easily obtainable by the general populus. It seems Eutychis had an unpleasant life, even though her name means Fortunate. I hate to say it, but Vesuvius might have done her a favor.
The house of the Sirici had a few nice frescos, too, but it had even more impressive mosaic floors, even though a few had extreme ripples in them due to more recent earthquakes.
The House of the Faun occupied an entire block. It was so named because of a delightful little faun statue that greets you in the atrium (the one you see here is a replica). It must have been nice to have a home that took up more than 32,000 square feet, including two atria and two porticoed gardens. The owners enjoyed an excellent view of Vesuvius. (It’s ironic how a factor that was most likely considered an asset suddenly became a liability.)
On the edge of one garden, they had an extravagant micro-mosaic of the battle between Alexander the Great and King Darius of Persia. It’s fascinating how the artist manages to bring such detail and depth of field into this work. I didn’t want to stop looking at it, but the unrelenting tour groups kept dominating the space.
Another thing I absolutely loved about this house was the multicolored marble flooring. Such extravagance is practically unheard of in modern homes. That’s understandable due to the expense, but it’s also a great aesthetic loss.
I found it really interesting that the ultra-rich lived cheek-by-jowl with the poor. In fact, some of the more extensive manses would often rent out half their ground floor for shops and tenement apartments. Even the lower middle classes lived comfortably in Pompeii. Their houses may have been smaller, but they were still well decorated, and some even had private baths.
Most of the houses in Pompeii are now open to the elements since they’ve been excavated. As I said earlier, the volcanic eruption in 79AD left Pompeii frozen in time. Unfortunately, now that they’re re-exposed, they are deteriorating at a rate that’s faster than the restorers can keep up with.
Obviously, the archeologists found artifacts in each building, but they didn’t leave them lying around in open air displays for anyone to walk off with. Enough looting had taken place in previous centuries. Many of the best objects are now housed in museums in other parts of the country and in other places in the world, but Pompeii itself also has a really nice museum, which they call the Antequarium. You shouldn’t miss it.
There, you can see many of the amazing things that the archeologists found on site, including sculptures, frescos, pottery, glassware, jewelry, medical instruments, and ornate architectural elements. Here are a few of the things that impressed me the most, including a bronze bust of Dionysus. I couldn’t avoid the reflections on the glass, but if you look closely at it, you can see that it had glass eyeballs which remained intact. The effect seems kind of creepy, but only because it is so unexpected. I was probably quite common at the time. I suspect that many of the ancient bronze statues we see that have empty eye sockets were similarly adorned back then.
Another striking aspect of Pompeii is that you can’t help but notice that Capitalism was alive and well even in 79AD. There is no doubt that their economy was thriving. There were lots of commercial enterprises, including fast food places, brothels, marketplaces, theaters, gambling establishments, taverns, bakeries, workshops, and open forums where people could gather and network, and there was at least one hotel. There were even laundries with large jars near the entrance used for the collection of urine to be used as a detergent for the processing of clothes. (I don’t know how the archeologists figured that out, and I’m not sure I want to know.)
What particularly fascinated me were the fast food joints. They were abundant because a lot of the lower class Pompeiians did not have kitchens. If they wanted a hot meal, they had to eat out. Along many sidewalks, you’d see counters that had holes for recessed terracotta vessels. These vessels contained soups, stews and watered down wine to be served to customers. They would also provide bread.
One of the best-preserved shops belonged to a woman named Asellina. Her tavern was on Pompeii’s busiest throughfare, and based on the sign painted beside the doorway, she named the place after herself. Along with the drinks, she also served a limited menu, with pictures thereof on the outside wall, and there were 3 rooms in the back for prostitutes. During their excavations, archeologists found all the utensils used for serving the food and drinks, a pile of coins, some modest furniture, and a shrine to Mercury and Bacchus.
Pompeii also had a large Forum and Basilica area. At the time, basilicas had nothing to do with religion. They were more like financial centers and courthouses. It was the largest building in the city. The Forum was the center of public life in the city. It consisted of a large square surrounded by public buildings. Citizens met here for religious and political functions, to transact business, or simply to socialize. Some of the buildings on the Forum included a Temple of Jupiter with a sacrificial altar out front, two arches to honor members of the imperial family, public barns, the municipal treasury, the Temple of Apollo, the public administration buildings, and the senate house.
Pompeii has a huge amphitheatre which we could only view from a distance, because it was being prepared for an event that sounds like it’s going to become an annual thing. It’s called Beats of Pompeii, or BoP for short, and it’s a recently created music festival. I’m kind of surprised the Pompeii Archeological Park administration has signed off on 3,000 rowdy concertgoers descending on their amphitheatre on 11 different summer nights, but there you have it. You can read more about it here.
We did get to see the smaller theater, called the Odeon, which is right beside the larger one, as well as the Quadriporticum, which was a large square courtyard area surrounded by a covered walkway and small rooms. People used to gather there to socialize between events, but later it was converted into housing and gyms for gladiators.
Pompeii had several public baths, but the most impressive one was the Stabian Baths, so we visited that one. I don’t know why, but the place gave me the chills. Of all the buildings we visited, it seemed like the one that should have been filled with the most activity and noise. Instead, it was abandoned and quiet. It felt like there was still human energy there, with no bodies for it to inhabit. It was really sad. You can tell by these photos how elaborate and luxurious the place had been, with its cold, warm and hot rooms, sauna, and massage tables. I’m sure it would still be popular today if it were still intact.
All of the above should give you an idea of what a thriving city this had been. The idea that that a city that had been developing for nearly 700 years was wiped out in a relative blink of an eye is heartbreaking. If a visit to Pompeii does nothing else for you, it definitely reminds you how fragile human endeavors truly are.
Having said all that, life in Pompeii was definitely not all sunshine and lollipops. Clearly, it wasn’t fun for the slaves or the gladiators or the ultra poor. But there is also evidence that crime was rampant. Many of the luxurious homes kept guard dogs. One of my favorite mosaics in all of Pompeii is shown below. It’s on the floor of the entrance to The House of the Tragic Poet. It says “Cave Canem,” or Beware of Dog.
Here are two photos that defy a specific category, but for me, they demonstrate how hauntingly bucolic the area seems to be. In fact, many members of the Roman Patriarchy had vacation villas in the area, and vineyards climbed the slopes of Vesuvius.
Today, the rural imagery is deceptive. Urban sprawl is just over the horizon. But these images make me understand why ancient Romans wanted to settle here. They had no idea the danger they were putting themselves in.
I was really impressed with the infrastructure of Pompeii. The city planning, and the water system was outstanding. The images below show that there were public water fountains at every major intersection, and the raised blocks in the roadways, placed there so pedestrians could avoid stepping in the sewage in the streets, were separated just wide enough to accommodate wagon wheels. And many of these roads were well used by wagons, as evidenced by the ruts worn into the stone.
Pompeii back then was right on the waterfront. It is now 2300 feet inland, but it did have a well designed port. And many hallways, roadways, and lower parts of walls have little bits of white marble placed between the stones, which historians have finally figured out were put there as a form of lighting at night. When the moon was out, it would reflect off these stones and that made these paths much easier to see. Such brilliant people.
(A side note about the fountains. Each of the faces depicts a different god, and you’ll note that many have working hose bibs sticking out of them now so the tourists can refill their water bottles. They had to modernize them, because the original pipes, while still capable of water flow, were made of lead. So the water is potable, and in fact is quite good.
The entire day felt like an adventure in time travel and a deep dive into ancient history. Such bliss! Last but not least, check out this compilation I made of several of the videos DH took on his phone during our visit. Let me know what you think!
In my next Pompeii post, I’ll hit you with some plaster casts (not literally, of course) of some of the Pompeiians who did not escape the wrath of Mt. Vesuvius, and discuss it’s impact on Pompeii, and the potential risk factors for area residents today, as well as discussing how the city was rediscovered and excavated. So stay tuned!
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