Italia Part 2: Pompeii (!!)

First off, I cannot believe I actually got to go to Pompeii. I went through a phase in like 5th grade where I was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, mummies and Pompeii. I just thought it was the coolest thing. Seeing it in real life was not disappointing. It's amazing how well preserved it is, and it's an entire city that they've excavated. It took us all day to walk around it. I just wish that they left the art where they found it instead of taking it to the Naples Museum, cause we didn't make it over there. But it was still pretty awesome.

The train ride there was...interesting. (Naples is just a little ghetto, at least the part I saw). It was a jam-packed graffiti'd train car full of a pickpocket gang of teenagers. Half of them stood at the front being obnoxious and loud while their quiet friends stood in the back unobtrusively, with all of us smashed in between. My family definitely didn't like "metro-surfing" with smelly strangers while protecting their bags for a good half hour but it just reminded me of Paris haha. Oh the things I've learned on study abroad...

But Pompeii itself was pretty amazing. I never realized how technologically advanced the Romans were. The Middle Ages really were the "dark" ages. They lost so much. The roads are a good examples. The residents of Pompeii would clean the streets every night by diverting water down them. In case pedestrians were caught outside, they had raised sidewalks and stepping stones so that they could cross without getting wet. 3 stones meant a major road, 2 a two-way street, and 1 a one-way street. The raised sidewalks also had "cat's eyes" (white stones that reflected light) imbedded so that people could see where they were going in the moonlight.

Stepping stones. The streets are paved like this all over the city

Cat's eye

They also had pedestrian-only areas, like the Forum. They placed these "buck-teeth" barriers at the end of the roads to prevent chariots from going into those places. And they even had pedestrian-only signs in Latin.

"Beaver-teeth"

Pedestrian-only sign

I think it's safe to say that they were literate, since the graffiti is in Latin too. You can tell why graffiti is an Italian word--it is everywhere! Even on their ruins.

The good thing about the ruins is that you can see how they built stuff. Like these columns-they used red bricks, and then covered them with a veneer of marble dust to make it look like marble. Genius. 

Maybe this is a nerd moment, but I thought this was SO COOL: The archaeologists made plaster casts of the roots growing in the gardens and vineyards, figured out the exact variety of plants that were there and replanted some of them. So when you walk through them, you are seeing it exactly as it was right before the eruption buried it. They even make wine out of the same vineyards the Pompeiians did.

I was really excited to see the bathhouse, and it didn't disappoint. They had separate sides for men and women, a courtyard to exercise in, hot and cold baths, and even lockers!

Roman lockers

 The roof of the bathhouse was textured so that water stuck to the walls and didn't drip down on the people. Roman architecture is amazing!!

There are also a ton of stray dogs in Pompeii. They are all used to humans, are fed, spayed and neutered and vaccinated by the city and allowed to sleep inside in the shade whenever they feel like it. Just like in ancient Pompeii (There's a famous mosaic that says Beware of the Dog in Latin). Italians sure love their dogs! (And there's a similar program for cats at one of the ruins in Rome.)

Beware of the dog mosaic

This is a Pompeii cafe. It turns out Romans didn't really like to cook for themselves so they would go out for "fast food" instead. The holes in the marble counters were for soup pots.

This is the cistern that fed water to the aqueducts all over the city. Brigit and Ethan climbed into it and ended up poking their heads out of a sewer grate haha. Don't worry, it hasn't been used for 2000 years.

This was a bakery. Does the oven look familiar? It's almost exactly like a modern pizza oven.

Here's my parents in front of the surgeon's house. They found gynecological instruments here including forceps when they excavated. My dad got super excited when we read that haha. The guy that lived here did the same exact thing my dad does, only 2000 years earlier.

 The frescos on the walls were also really cool. Because Pompeii was buried for so long, some of them are really well preserved. This one is from a country villa a little outside the city.

This table was owned by the first man to stab Julius Caesar when Brutus betrayed him. And it's just sitting in the guy's living room. Still. Crazy.

These are some of the bodies they found when excavating. They are in the vineyard furthest from Vesuvius, but couldn't make it past the wall before they were buried. It's called the Garden of the Fugitives. Pretty sad, a bunch of them are children.

The amphitheater was probably one of my favorites. It could seat 20,000 people, and unlike the Colosseum, you can still see the seats. They have started holding modern concerts there.

To sum it up.... the Romans were pretty amazing. I had a good reason to be obsessed with them as a kid haha. So if you are ever in Italy, definitely go to Pompeii. It's worth it.

Next up: Vatican City!