We’ve seen A LOT of ruins in our travels so far. It seems like everywhere we go there’s some old rocks to look at. Roman rocks, Greek rocks, Moon rocks…who can keep track? The guide books say that they all are “must see” attractions, but in all honesty, many of these historical sites require quite a bit of imagination to feel like what you’re looking at is anything more than…well, a pile of rocks. We even suspect that in a few cases the locals just arranged a few stones, put up a plaque and started charging admission.
It was with that attitude that we almost decided to skip Pompeii. Now granted, we are terrible at history, so we usually like to pass the time at these kind of places coming up with our version of events. Using the only dates we know with any degree of certainty…
– The birth of Christ: 1 AD
– Columbus Discovered America: 1492
– The Declaration of Independence: 1776
– Christine and I were born:1971
…we have developed a quite interesting timeline of what we imagine has transpired throughout the ages.
We naiively had no idea how incredible Pompeii was. This is no pile of rocks. These rocks still look like stuff! When Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, (thank you Wikipedia) it covered the city in 20 feet of volcanic ash until it was excavated a few hundred years ago. What remains is an unbelievably preserved Ancient Roman city. When you walk throught the streets and enter the buildings, you feel like you have gone back in time. There are houses, baths, temples, corner bars and brothels. There is even still graffiti on the walls. Apparently someone named Phileros is a eunuch, and Epaphra, you are bald! (Man are they going to be pissed when they read that)
Probaly the eeriest thing, besides the feeling you are walking in a ghost town where everyone has just picked up and left, are the plaster casts of the voids in the ash left by the victims bodies. You see them frozen in time in their last moments. Not much need for imagination.
Mike, don’t front. You miss city-life.
The trip looks sooo fun!