Grand Tour of Italy: Pompeii

For 3 days midway through our tour in April we were in the Naples area, passing it back-n-forth three to four times but never actually entering the city to visit it. No problem for us because it looked way too busy!

See what I mean!  And that's Mt. Vesuvius overshadowing it.

Our guide told us, while we passed Naples on the way to Pompeii, 25 km south,

that if Vesuvius erupts again, 3 million people in the Naples area will have nowhere to go.

Perish the thought.

The day with our Italian guide started and ended at this spot.

It was two hours in the rain (top 3) after which the sun broke through (bottom 3).

From there we meandered across the complex of a city that is now in ruins,

due to Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in AD 79, burying the city in 13-20 feet of ash.

It would be nigh on impossible for me to mark the route we took that day,

but the city plan can be easily walked in exact measurement if you have the time...and map.

That day too many separate groups of tourists (with guides like ours) criss-crossed our path,

so our guide made decisions on where to turn, right or left, based on traffic!

I suppose the rain at that point made no difference to her.

You can imagine the amount of time it took to excavate and restore the ruins from all that ash.

Brick and stone, one at a time.

Brick and stone.

Brick and stone.

From place to place there were artifacts, also restored.

You could envision how they lived...

 ...and played?

Frescoes line the walls of a brothel, with a copulation bed nearby.

We heard a guide say there are over 100 phallic carvings in the streets.

It makes you wonder.....

Of course, the famous Roman columns with their 4 types were everywhere:

Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Tuscan.  Remember that from Latin class?

The rain was stopping when we reached the forum at the end of our tour.

The forum was the center of Roman religious, cultural and political life.

I suppose it was similar to the market squares we see today all over Europe?

Not much is left to the imagination when you see the actual remains of ash-covered bodies,

or the artifacts recovered over years of excavation.  

I thought of  Mom, who loved archaeology and would have enjoyed seeing such a place.

The sun came out, as I said, at the end of our tour.

Whether in sun or rain, the flowers reminded me that Mother Nature 

has her way of reclaiming history, however good or bad.

Walking back to where we started, it felt appropriate that the sun did come out.

We needed that.