Up Pompeii

Strange, isn’t it, how a place can take you back to your childhood.

For me Pompeii is one thing, a TV show, Frankie Howerd in a toga. A comedy, he was a slave for an eminent Roman. Presumable it is set just before the eruption and I was yet a teenager. I didn’t really like the show, I didn’t understand the innuendo, I still wouldn’t like the show. I still wouldn’t understand the innuendo.

 

 

 

 

But first we had to get there. Pompeii is south Italy, south Italy has a fearsome reputation, and the worse of the lot, Napoli. This is the second time I have visited Pompeii, the second time I have visited Napoli. Sometimes I feel a little guilty of this, I don’t even get some of the places I visit, like Pompeii, I am just not that interested about Roman culture, life and yesteryear. But that is for later in the post, first we need to get to Napoli.

The first time I visited Napoli I was 19, I had a one month rail ticket around Europe and we were on the cheap. Probably we had slept on the train, on some couchette, probably we hadn’t slept. My only memory of Napoli, as we entered on the train a residential skyscraper ablaze, flames pouring out from several floors! Napoli was scary.

Napoli is still scary.

We drove along the coast. The buildings started to deteriorate. Rubbish started to pile up and the people started to change. It doesn’t matter how long you have lived worked and played with other cultures, when something changes dramatically you start to feel uncomfortable. Was this Italy or some rundown part of Detroit, it felt very intimidating. There were no aires around here, and the nearest was some 30km the other side of Napoli, the tourist side of Napoli. It was dusk now, the closer we got to the city, the worse it got, we retreated back away from the city until eventually we found a car park where we reluctantly spent the night.

That night we weren’t stabbed, mugged or harassed at all. The local were probably flabbergasted that some tourist might park their motorhome in our neighbourhood, but were too polite to ask. Who knows, we never spoke to them, we moved on.

The local area didn’t look quite so intimidating in daylight, but the rubbish was still there. We later thought that perhaps this is how they collect the rubbish here. Everyone dumps it in a pile to be picked up!

The buildings still looked decrepit and many appeared abandoned. This is bi-polar area, on the one hand what looks like deprivation, right next to golf resorts. Those that might book a week here would get a shook, these images might not appear in any sales literature. Maybe their focus would be on the beach, their handicap and the cocktail to look forward to.

But today was not for the suburbs and not even for Napoli. We had some serious sightseeing to do!

We head for Pompeii. We planned to stay in, of all things, a campsite. It has the best facilities, including washing machines which compensated for the slightly higher charges than the aire.

Once Dora was settled in, we walk to Pompeii, which is literally 100m away.

We purchase a ticket which will get us into 5 major attractions, our relentless culture tour which started in Roma continues. We pick up an Audio tour and make our way to the first buildings, a bathing complex.

Now here, Frankie Howerd was absolutely right, the Roman’s were a little bit, you know. Well if you want a higher resolution image, please request, but I didn’t want any internet police on our backs.

More of this naughtiness later on.

We spend nearly an hour in the baths, listening to every aspect of Roman bathing life.

Then we head into town.

I suppose we were only just getting to appreciate how big this place is, its not the size of Talavera or Tunbridge Wells but it would still take twenty minutes to walk one side to the other, But this isn’t your home town, this is an archaeological dig of gigantic proportions.

You just get a flavour of what it could have been like.

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This place was properly discovered and excavation started in the seventeenth century. They haven’t finished yet. Tourists only get to see a small proportion of what has so far been excavated.

But there is still a lot to see.

The centre of town. Lots about town meetings, temples, social structure, who paid for what etc.

Lots of ruins! For me what is interesting, those columns, made of brick and then rendered, most of this stuff was fake, made to look like stone. These Romans were properly cheap.

Ok, there is the odd bit of stone.

There is also an awful lot of tourists. Even today, half way through the week, in April, this place is pretty buzzing.

OK maybe not the best photo to express that, but it was, I promise.

See, more people here.

And ever present, and the real reason we are here. He is shy. Afraid to show himself, just a little bit embarrassed about what he did.

Behind all that cloud, Vesuvius.

Now here, completely off topic, I would like to admit something. We write our blog about two weeks in the past. So now we are just about to leave Italy and head for Greece.

Pompeii seems so far in the past as since them we have travelled so far and done so much, climbed four volcanoes, gone island hopping and seen a lot more archaeological sites. Maybe we should take more notes!

Columns, columns everywhere.

More columns.

More fake columns. But never really defining a building. You need a lot of imagination around here to put these structures together, to make a building and then to inhabit them.

But still you can get some tranquillity, this is a beautiful place

Not sure what she was all about though.

Temple, food store, meeting place, accounting room, all start to look the same.

But it is amazing to think they have been excavating here for three hundred years, and are continuing to this day.

We had elaborate descriptions of painting styles, this I think is first, or maybe second or third! It was all to do with the perspective and what was included I think.

Now is starts to become real. A person, horrifically captured trying to flee, cast in stone.

And another, crouching, as end times approached, now clustered amongst earthenware.

Earthenware stacked on scaffolding shelving.

More bodies, anguished.

This was now sad, depressing. We moved on.

We had completed the main square and probably covered about 25% of our audio tour. We had two hours left before everything closed.

Now we needed to focus, what did we want to see. It became apparent that this site was just to big. Even if we had entered at nine, which we had not, it would be difficult to cover the whole town.

We needed a system.

We needed to create a priority list.

Top of the list.

We headed for the brothel.

There was quite a long queue!

Not sure what is means, but it sounds good. Like an x rated film!

Not the most comfortable of beds for a bit of hanky panky.

Is this a menu or a suggestion list?

Back outside and the tours groups were getting ready for the final sprint, we had just two hours left and 70% to see.

Another bathing complex, boy did these Romans love to bathe.

Bigger than the first one we saw, this was in the centre of town.

They should restore it properly, I would love to slide into a nice hot pool just now.

The underground ducts. Hot air forced round the complex making it all nice and steamy. Clever chaps those Romans.

Not sure really, some temple I suppose.

This I do remember, this is part of the theatre complex, maybe like a foyer, “Wasn’t the lead marvellous, dear”.

And this is the theatre itself, stage one of two. In pristine condition.

Wandering up to the boxes, well you wouldn’t want to sit with the general population.

With all the thousands of people wandering around this site you can still get the place practically to yourself. Presumably it would be different in summer.

Nice bit of road, really high pavements, to keep all the squalor away from the houses I suppose.

And their coliseum. Not as grand as Roma, of course, but still pretty impressive.

And the training ground for the gladiators. We are now at the edge of town, and there is just a scattering of fellow tourists.

Entering into the arena.

And there she is, in all her glory. This one didn’t have an under croft, so the animals were bought in through the main gates.

Light is fading around here, we need to start the long walk back to the exit, Pompeii is about to close.

Now something we can really relate to, a vineyard. We head for the exit, we head back to Dora, we need a glass of wine.

Wine can be successfully swigged between laundry. Gradually Dora becomes festooned with our underwear, looking like some Nepalese prayer flags. Not many times do we  get the awning out, or the climbing rope!

Tomorrow Ercolano and Herculaneum, Pompeii’s smaller sister and more laundry.

GDR