Pompeii

June 13, 2023

Pompeii is the last of the big four Naples must-do’s on the books for us. The other three, in case you're wondering, are the Archeological Museum, Herculaneum and the Giro d’Italia. We missed Pompeii at the start of the tour and chose instead to visit Herculaeum, but it is still high on our list of places to visit. So, with a free day today, it was a perfect opportunity to see this unique historic site.

There are several ways to get to Pompeii, which I found quite confusing when I was planning the trip. Now that we are here, it’s much clearer. Among the options are car, bus, taxi, rickety train and nice train. Then there are tours. You can do individual tours, group tours or audio tours in combination with those choices. And, then you can combine tours to Pompeii, Vesuvius, and Herculaneum if you have the energy. Finally, do you pre-book, buy skip-the-line tickets or just wing it and buy tickets on site? Yikes. No wonder it was confusing.

We decided to take the metro to the train station, ride the rickety train to Pompeii, use Rick Steves’ Pompeii audio tour and wing it for the tickets. We would buy them on site.

The rickety train is better known as the Circumvesuviana. It also happens to be the favourite train of the local pickpockets. As the name suggests it does a loop around Vesuvius, visiting Herculaneum, Pompeii and Sorrento among others. Its starting point, the Napoli Porta Nolana station, is just short walk from Napoli Centrale or from the Duomo metro station.

We bought a couple of metro tickets at the tabacci next to our B&B and headed for the metro at Università. The metro was deserted, which seemed a bit odd, but it saved us a bit of walking energy. It was a ten minute walk to Porta Nolana station that stretched out to 35 minutes because we tripped upon the Porta Nolana Street Market.

Naples Street Markets

I recommend anyone visiting Naples to check out the street markets. It’s a slice of life like no other. There are many markets to choose from and visiting them all would surely spice up your day or week. The Porta Nolana market is known for its seafood and dates back to the 15th century. Lonely Planet sums it up well: “Naples at its most vociferous and intense, the Mercato di Porta Nolana is a heady, gritty street market where bellowing fishmonger and greengrocers collide with fragrant delis and bakeries, contraband cigarette vendors and Bangladeshi takeaways and grocery stores.” They forgot the pickpockets, but they are so ubiquitous they don’t get mention. Not that we were hit by any pickpockets, it just comes with the territory.

Somewhere in the distance is the actual Porta Nolana, an ancient arched city gate.

This is why the Mediterranean diet is so successful. Note, you do not drive your car to the market!

The tomatoes are $0.15/100g (or $0.65 /lb)

For reference 3.00€ /kg is $0.45 /100g (or about $1.97 /lb).

As we stood in front of these shellfish tubs, we got squirted!

Pompeii

During on our street food tour a month ago, we were discussing things to see and do when you come to Naples. When we mentioned Pompeii, one of the guests (in her 40’s) said she had not heard of Pompeii until she arrived here.

It took me a-back and made me pause to reflect on how we each define common knowledge, and about my own exposure to Pompeii. I was a studious kid from get-go in Grade one. I have plenty of memories from those early years and I distinctly remember learning about Pompeii when I made a booklet about ancient Greece for an assignment in grade 6 social studies. I used the only source of information available to me, the Book of Knowledge which sat in the living room on the bookshelf, a 2x10 wooden plank supported on two concrete building blocks.

I remember carefully cutting out the diagrams and black & white photos, which I thought looked ancient themselves, and pasting them into my report. I wrote a short summary to go with each one. I was especially proud of the cover I made out of brown construction paper with hand-cut pink letters of A N C I E N T and G R E E CE overlapping at the intersection of the letter E, scrabble-style. Did I ask permission to cut up the Book of Knowledge? I am pretty certain that’s a no 😳. Was there a reference section citing the Book of Knowledge? Maybe, since it was a research project.🤓

All that is to say that Pompeii made a lasting impression on me from a young age. I never imagined I would one day walk the streets of this 2500+ year old city.

Rickety Train

We pulled ourselves away from the market and made our way to the train station. Our tickets were good for both the metro and the Circumvesuviana so we went straight to the platform where the train was. This train is no beauty, the seats at hard and it gets stiflingly hot on a warm day, but it will get you where you are going. We knew it was the Circumvesuviana in one glance. It is nameless and covered in graffiti from top to bottom and end to end.

We were lucky to get seats as many people were standing for the journey. We opened the window to get some air flowing as other passengers gradually filled the aisles. The train lurched out of the station and got up to speed after a short while. Several stops down the tracks, a group of musicians hopped on and began playing, one on accordion, another on a drum. A local woman sitting opposite us rolled her eyes and huffed in disapproval. They weren’t actually that bad, but they don’t work for free. They came around with a hat to collect coins afterward from any and everyone, including those whose possessions had been snatched while they were enjoying the tunes.

The musicians left after two stops and as they exited, we heard a woman yelling at people on the platform near the back door. She was the ticket collector and had just thrown several bad actors off the train and told them to never come back, or something like that. Then she came through the train and instructed everyone in a forceful, stern voice to hold their valuables tightly to their body. It was clear to us that she knew the offending party and likely that they knew her. It’s a game of cat and mouse for the pick pockets. We had come prepared, carrying just a water bottle and nothing else outside our clothing.

We hopped off the train at the Pompeii Scavi station and bought tickets at the entrance. It was about 11:00 and there was no lineup to speak of to buy tickets or to enter the park. Pompeii is a large site and there is much more to see than you could cover in one day. In all, we spent about 2 1/2 hours walking the site. We opened the Rick Steves’ Pompeii tour on my phone and followed the route he suggested.

It's hard to out into words what it felt like to be walking through Pompeii. So, I won’t even try other than to say it makes me feel like my life is a tiny blip on a very long continuum of humanity. We enter, we live, we leave and then it’s someone else turn. It is humbling to be here and a privilege to walk in the footsteps of those who built and lived in this place.

The entrance to Pompeii was on the seashore in 79 AD but is 700m from the shore today.

Stone walls separate the homes. The round stones were used for grinding wheat so that space was likely a bakery.

Colonnade of the Forum with two different styles of columns, Doric (plain) on the bottom and Ionic (with scrolls) on the top.

These columns of the Basilica were damaged in an earthquake about 12 years before the fateful day in 69 AD and were undergoing reconstruction.

Before the eruption of Vesuvius, Pompeii was a bustling city of 12,000 people that had a complex water system, an amphitheatre, gymnasium, a port and about 100 streets. All told, 2,000 people were trapped in the ash and pyroclastic material while the remaining 10,000 managed to escape.

Main street, Pompeii, Via dell’Abbondanza.

Archaeology must be hard on the joints. Every small piece of ceramic and stone excavated went into a bag and was recorded.

Dog mosaic at the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet, with the inscription "Cave Canem" - Latin for "Beware of the dog".

Notice how well fitted the stones are. That’s Vesuvius in the background.

These raised stones prevented carts from entering the pedestrianized streets.

White squares were inserted in the sidewalks as cat’s eyes to help with visibility in low light.

Frescoes

Some of the best-preserved Roman frescos come from the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Stories told by many of the frescoes are based on mythology and reflect what might happen to you if you did something to make the gods angry. Others show scenes, people, plants and everyday objects. And, some are advertisements for products and services. Then, there are the X-rated frescoes. It comes as a surprise to many that frescoes depicting erotic images, scenes of sex and phallic images are abundant in Pompeii.

The House of the Vettii is an extraordinary exhibit which opened earlier this year after 20 years of conservation work. This is an 11,000 square foot home that belonged to two wealthy wine merchants who were freed slaves, or freedmen. The frescoes covering the walls are largely intact thanks to the painstaking restoration work and the colours are so vivid, they look as though they could have been painted in the last century. All of the frescoes below are from the House of Vettii.

For more about this home and the stories behind the murals, you can check out this YouTube video.

This fresco is of Priapus, the god of fertility, in the entrance to the House of Vettii. He is weighing his phallus against a sack of money, symbolizing prosperity of the owners.

It's thought this was a prostitution room.

This lararium, or household shrine, depicts a pair of Lares holding conical drinking cups flanking a genius wearing a toga and holding a libation bowl and an incense box. Underneath, a serpent winds towards an altar.

The serpent is, a “good spirit” of vineyards and grain fields.

They certainly understood how to convey depth and dimension. This is a flat fresco.

Cupid figures carrying on with daily life, making perfume, weaving, entertaining, etc.

Garden in the House of Vettii with plants that would have been grown here at the time of the eruption.

Bakeries

Many homes in Pompeii baked their own bread, but it seems that bakeries were popular. Thirty-five bakeries been found in Pompeii, each supplying their local area. Larger bakeries had their own mills for milling grains. These establishments were generally found on the town’s main streets and in the northern part of the city, close to the countryside and grain supplies. Many bakeries had a separate street entrance to transport goods, suggesting that they did deliveries.

A bakery with oven and grinding stones for milling the grains of wheat.

Baking was done in large ovens fuelled by vine wood. Each oven had a flue to vent off the smoke. Many oven rooms also had ceiling vents to help disperse the smoke. Each loaf was inserted into the oven on a wooden paddle. Finished goods were then stored before selling to the public.

Wood oven of the bakery of Popidius priscus.

Milling stones were cone shaped. Grains were fed into the hopper at the top and the upper stone was rotated by animals.

Food Courts

There are several of these food bars in Pompeii. So, what did the Pompeians eat at such a bar? Archaeologists found a duck bone fragment in one of the containers, along with remains from goats, pigs, fish and snails. It’s speculated that hot and cold foods, along with wine were sold in these food courts.

Wealth and Status

Pompeii was home to all levels of society, from wealthy to middle class and on down to slaves. Interstingly, slaves could become free and given status as full fledged Roman citizens.

The homes of the wealthiest Pompeiians were the largest, most richly decorated and contained gardens, marble sculptures and plenty of art. Most of the objects found within the homes are now housed in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. The impluvium pictured below, with its statue and coloured marble diamonds, reflects that the owner of this house was wealthy.

Bronze statue of the Dancing Faun in the impluvium at the House of the Faun. The impluvium collected rainwater through an opening in the atrium roof.

Fountain in the House of the Small Fountain is richly decorated with shells.

Feeling satisfied with our self guided tour, we headed for the train station to return to Naples. There is no particular schedule as it’s impossible for the Circumvesuviana to stick to it, so we just made sure we were on the correct platform and waited. A train rolled in to the station at one point, but oddly enough, the doors were all locked. When one of the doors opened, the ticket lady announced we could get on board for 15 €. There were no takers and the train moved on, virtually empty.

The Circumvesuviana eventually came and we all piled on board. David and I found two seats among a group of three young female travellers who each had a giant suitcase on wheels. I swear one of them could have fit inside her suitcase. These monstrosities take up a lot of precious space on a train like this which has no extra space for luggage. After about 20 minutes, one of the ladies asked if she could squeeze her suitcase in front of David’s knees because she needed to stretch out... she had long legs according to her friend 😳. All I can say is it’s a good thing she didn’t ask me!

Final Plans

Our flight leaves Naples tomorrow morning at 6:15am so we spent a bit of time doing our final packing and arranging a taxi for 4:00am. The olive oil souvenirs from Vieste were packed with the bikes, the taralli’s we're in my front pack. We fly to Charles de Gaulle, then on to Vancouver where we plan to take the ferry to the island. If all goes well, we will meet our good friends Debbie and John onboard as they’d be on the ferry and have kindly offered to drive us home. There’s nothing quite like meeting up with your friends when you get home from an adventure like this. It’s like the cherry on top!

The Last Supper

For our last supper in Naples, I made reservations online at a nearby restaurant at 7:30. We're pretty comfortable finding our way around the hood by now, so we headed off through the maze of small streets to the restaurant.

We got the last seats at the restaurant so felt pretty lucky. It was our last chance to sample a charcuterie board, so we started with that and then went on to the main courses. As you can see from the picture, there was enough food to feed six. The little pot of golden liquid is honey. It goes really well with the hard cheeses.

This was so simple, but so yummy. Steak on arugula with cherry tomatoes and gran padano cheese shards.

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Anne AnastasiouGlad you made it to Pompeii. It was nice to read and reminisce about our visit there in 2004. It was January and very wet and cold but so interesting and not crowded! Like you, getting there was a challenge for the 4 of us without paying a fortune for a tour from Rome or 4 train tickets. We found hiring a car for the day and driving down the most economical but I don't think the least stressful! Worth it though!
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9 months ago

Anne MathersI love to hear that these journals bring back memories of your travels. Driving wouldn’t be on my list, but then cycling wouldn’t be on many peoples lists either 🤪!
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9 months ago