rome-ing around...: MINI-BREAK: pompeii and herculaneum

i moved to rome in september. other than a spa day trip to the thermal springs in the nearby town of viterbo, i have found it difficult to motivate myself to get outside of the city walls. it is sometimes hard for me to imagine that there is anywhere else quite as gob-smackingly impressive as rome but you never know unless you try i guess? so with my weekend landing itself on a tuesday and wednesday at this time of year, i thought i would bite the bullet and book myself a 'mini-break'. without a second's thought, i knew my first stop in italy: pompeii and herculaneum. if you're looking for pure, un-polluted, i'll-pop-in-for-a-cup-of-tea-with-a-roman type history you would be stupid not to hop in that time traveller (which unfortunately happens to be a rather dingey train ride from napoli) and pitch camp near one of these two historic towns. i had been to both excavation sites in 2008 but having spent a large part of my final year at university studying pompeii i couldn't wait to put a name to a face...or in this instance, a page of notes to a building. it was to be a two day trip i had decided, and after booking a hostel in pompeii for the night, and asking my culture vulture of a friend will to join me, i packed my bag and got into bed with that same excitable feeling i get on christmas eve (don't judge?). before i know it, it is tuesday and our train has steamed into the dirtiest, scariest, most un-roman(tic) place on earth: naples. this was only the 2nd time i had ever been to naples. admittedly the first time i spend 90% of my time in museums, and this time i spent 100% of my time in a pizza restaurant (fyi: a pizza restaurant which has been around for 150 years serving only margherita and marinara pizzas and which features in the eat part of eat, pray, love with julia roberts...) but from what i know, i strongly dislike the city. there is something about it that makes me check the zip on my bag so regularly that i seem to always arrive at my destination with one or more broken nails. in a nutshell, it threatens me. hence the reason that as soon as we arrived, we headed into the staring throng of napolitans for an 11 o' clock thick crust thin base circle of heaven; and then we swiftly left again.

giants? an outsized block of
lego found behind the temple
of jupiter, pompeii.

so we spent our first day in herculaneum: the smaller, wealthier version of pompeii which, along with pompeii, oplontis and stabiae, was also buried under several metres of ash and pumice after the eruption of vesuvius on 24th august 79AD. i had remembered liking herculaneum more than
pompeii: there were fewer people, only 3 main streets intersected by two others, and the ruins and their content appeared equally impressive. all of these factors did indeed ring true during my second visit, in particular the first. we only saw a few other tourists during our visit, all having trouble heaving themselves up onto the pavements from the much lower road level, all tripping over the bfg-style cobbles (perhaps these towns were inhabited by giants? the size of their lego seems to imply that this was the case...), and all having problems rewinding their audioguides after being distracted by some other nugget of wondrousness. to some extent, the same can be said of pompeii at this time of year. summer in pompeii is more memorable for the coachloads of tourists sweating buckets and licking gelati than the ancient town itself, but visiting these ruins in january brought with it an added sense of eeriness and i felt as though i had been let into the site after closing hours (apart from the MASSIVE groups of japanese tourists i occasionally crossed paths with). oh what a lovely affair this was. having said that, two negatives of a mid-week january visit do spring immediately to mind. the first: wrap up warm. winter sun in naples can be bitterly deceiving especially when both hands are out of pockets holding cameras and whatnot. the second: many of the major houses (and indeed the smaller ones) are closed for restoration during the winter months and so you do spend a lot of time peering over ropes and through metal grates as though you are spying on your neighbour.

the content of the two towns are equally impressive, but one can see how pompeii has become the mecca for tourism that it is. it is the sheer scale of the town that blows your mind. to this day, they have only uncovered 45 of the 66 hectares that made up pompeii, and only 12 of these are open to tourists (and even this is impossible to see in one day without your legs falling off). perhaps they should invent an underground...i may pitch that to the authorities what with all the damage done by those cretins wandering along the streets by foot. i was pretty shocked at the lengths some stupid imbeciles go to to tell the world that they 'heart liam' or 'woz ere 1995' by scratching it into a 1st century fresco. it makes my blood boil. i witnessed the elements playing havock too with some original stucco falling off a wall in one of the smaller houses:
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JHS 98: obviously a necessary
message engraved into a 4th style
fresco in herculaneum

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crumbly heap: stucco that has
succumbed to the elements and
fallen from situ

having said this, not much seems to have changed, with graffiti very much seeming to be 'the thing' at the time of the eruption. both in pompeii and in herculaneum street graffiti seemed to be in abundance (far more elegantly executed than the three-year-old-let-loose-with-a-spray can look of the modern day). not only did these scribbles take place in public areas stating various laws and election campaigns, but in the wealthy villa of the mysteries at pompeii, a caricature of someone named 'rufus' has been engraved into a red wall panel in the atrium (this may have been a reference to marcus holconius rufus, a well-known public figure in 1st century BC pompeii). it looks as though it could have been drawn yesterday:

rufus: graffiti of a caricature in the atrium
of the villa of the mysteries, pompeii

this image really sums up what is so fantastic about these places. unlike the public monuments meant for all to see that we get in rome, pompeii and herculaneum allow us, as i said, to be a part of roman daily life and feel connected to the people of the 1st century AD. much like the letters and sketchings i talked about in the last post, these mundane and more casual records of history is what draws the 2,500,000 tourists to the city of pompeii each year. the endless graffiti, the gold bracelet given to the slave girl by her master and the loaf of bread found in the oven at herculaneum aren't dissimilar to the ticking wrist watch in the debris of the world trade centre after 9/11, or the locks of hair and piles of shoes left over from the holocaust in the imperial war museum in london. in all of these cases we are faced with a feeling of two polarities: we feel distance from the subjects in a chronological sense, but simulataneously there is a proximity between us and them in the way that any one human can understand and connect with another. as well as this, it is human nature's extraordinary morbid curiosity that brings so many tourists to these sites. despite the villa of the mysteries holding some of the best-preserved roman frescoes in the world, it is fiorelli's plastercasts that seem to be the honeypot in this house. the same applies to the house with the beautiful courtyard in herculaneum; despite the incredible floor mosaics that carpet pretty much the entirety of the groud floor, it is three skeletons clutching on to one another inside a glass cabinet that seem to draw most people's attention. and i don't blame them. above everything else remaining from these ancient towns, to me, it is the skeletons and casts that make the biggest impression. with the latter also preserving the bones inside of the plaster, fiorelli's invention has allowed us not only to see the bodily positions of those who were killed that day, but also their facial expressions. these casts give you a lump in your throat and even a tear in your eye as you realise that these towns were inhabited by real people, and they suffered the most horrific of deaths on that day in 79AD.

this state of preservation is of course what makes these cities so unique. as well as the stone structures which are bafflingly still standing(roofless due to the pressure of the volcanic debris), other materials such as metal and wood can also be seen at the sites. there are some pretty impressive (yet wonky) metal doors and window shutters remaining at the villa of the mysteries in pompeii; and at herculaneum, there is a preserved wooden staircase, wooden door frames and shutters, and even roof beams still existing in situ. wood, a substance usually prone to decomposition, has managed to survive 2 milleniums. g.o.b.s.m.a.c.k.i.n.g.

a wooden staircase preserved in a
glass cabinet, herculaneum

wooden shutters, herculaneum

another thing that strikes the tourist as he/she galavants around the streets of these towns is quite how similar the romans were to us. i know we don't wear togas and seek the thrill of watching criminals being torn to pieces by wild animals, but in an engineering sense, little seems to have changed. more than once in herculaneum did will and i turn to one another questioning whether a pipe was ancient or modern, or whether a wall was original or reconstructed (fyi: overtly reconstructed buildings, ie. the brothel in pompeii, are something i detest). one thing did strike me as i was looking at a fresco in the house of the seat of the augustali in herculaneum, and that was the roman's use of perspective in painting. the fourth style architectural fresco with a scene featuring hercules at its centre shows clear examples of an advanced use of perspective. as well as this, the almost life size figures in the frieze of the mysteries which gives the villa its name in pompeii not only give an impression of three dimensionality, but also emotion. if we look at the altar piece of the last judgement by nicolaus and johannes dating from the 12th century (the oldest painting in the vatican museums) and compare it to the artwork in pompeii, there appears to be a regression in the development of perspective. the following pictures will help to explain what i mean:

the last judgement by nicolaus and johannes
(12th century) shows very little sense of perpsective
or emotion

4th style fresco using perspective in the house of the seat of
the augustali, herculaneum

the art, the underfloor heating systems and the distribution of water around the city do make us wonder what other incredible things existed that we do not yet know about. next thing we know, we'll be unearthing ipods. i do feel that we seem to have come full circle since roman times and that perhaps until the 19th century, humanity was continuously struggling to reach that point of civilisation that the romans had once thrust upon the known world.

so after a day in herculaneum, during which i spent most of my time chatting and laughing and taking photos of will pretending to be a dwarf proprieter of a thermopolium (see right), and following that a day riding solo in pompeii, where the only thing i said was 'margherita' when ordering my slice of pizza for lunch and the only person who spoke to me was the rather annoying man on the the audioguide who talked at the rate of stephen hawking, i felt satisfied. i was not impressed by the surrounding area (although there is a fairly impressive church in modern day pompeii. see below) and especially not happy about being mistaken for a prositiute at 'pompei scavi' station at 6 o' clock in the evening. so having spent a day at each site and what felt like a day on the train home (the cattle train takes three hours...only ten euros but you pay in patience), as we pulled into roma termini, i was grinning like the cheshire cat and practically running back to the safety and warmth of rome's cobbled streets and my little old flat. thank you pompeii and herculaneum; it was a blast (no pun intended). but as always, i couldnt be happier to be home sweet rome...
for more information on the excavation sites at pompeii and herculaneum and the surrounding area, visit: Pompeii Sites

here are a few more holiday snaps: