(This is my husband’s post for the first time in a long time!)
[Dec.2024] I went to Pompeii for the first time, though I am Italian.
My wife who is Japanese had already been there, which is quite normal, as tourists who visit Campania in addition to the Amalfi Coast do not miss the opportunity to see the famous Pompeii.
The history of the city is famous: in 79 AD the city was buried by a volcanic eruption of Vesuvius that covered it with 6 meters of lava material.
What our guide Alfonso Maria explained to us is that initially the population saw the formation of a large column of smoke at a distance, which is said about 30 kilometres high.
It took the shape of a mushroom and subsequently fell on the surrounding areas including Pompeii covering it completely.
When ash and lapilli began to fall, the population began to escape but about 1,200 people did not manage to escape in time and died once reached by the violence of the eruption.
There are many examples of bodies that were found well preserved in the position they had when they were reached by the ash which solidified creating natural casts that preserved their shapes.
My first impression was of surprise at seeing how big the city is.
But the fact is that it has not yet been completely excavated and there are large areas that are still under metres of volcanic material.
There are always teams of archaeologists from all over the world who are excavating to bring the entire city to light, but I am sure it will take years and years before the work is completed.
It often happens that a new very important discovery is reported in the Italian news.
In addition to the size of the city, I was also struck by the wealth of the houses, some of which are still in good condition.
It was a commercial and very rich city, so the villas are large with spacious rooms and many frescoes and decorations.
Our guide explained to us that most Italian cities including Milan, Turin and Venice have an original Roman-type structure when the cities were born from military camps and for this reason they have a grid structure.
It is also very clear in Pompeii where there are the main streets and the side streets that connect them, and everything regularly numbered.
For this reason it was easy to manage.
Alfonso also told us that at that time the compulsory military service for men was twenty years, a large part of a person’s life at that time when the average life was much shorter than today.
That is why, according to him, the military used drugs and even hallucinogenic substances to overcome the difficulties of that life.
In the city there are also places similar to modern pubs where people stopped to drink wine but also beer which was very popular at that time.
Apparently the Romans were heavy smokers of local herbs not tobacco.
There are statues of famous women, and we were told that in Roman society women had important roles and were not discriminated against.
It seems that it was a very advanced society in terms of civil rights.
They had a belief related to the male penis and for this reason there are paintings and statues that represent a man with a large penis that were placed at the entrance of houses to ward off and keep away evil forces.
I liked the colours of the frescoes, very warm, from red to yellow ochre, almost absent cold colours.
The only negative aspect of the day was the cafe we stopped within the site to have some snacks.
It was a completely disorganized space.
It takes more than 30 minutes to drink a cappuccino and over an hour to eat a sandwich.
They have very few seats and very low education of the staff.
Bad example especially for foreign tourists.
At the end of the tour we visited the amphitheatre.
It is very large, it could hold about 20,000 people.
There is also a theatre and many other things to see but it would take days to calmly visit the whole city.
When we left, Alfonso greeted a completely black cat that they call Celestino which means light blue or celestine.
The guide was very nice, a typical Campanian person, with many exaggerations.
For example, he said that for an Italian it takes only 15 days to learn English because it is a language of Latin origin.
But after 40 years as an English tour guide he still fills his speeches with pronunciation errors and not only.
But this is part of the local culture.
They always recite and exaggerate everything.
