Today we took a 3 hour bus ride down the coast (past Naples) to Pompeii, by the way it was really cold!!! For those of you who do not know Pompeii is near the western coast of Italy and is at the base of Mount Vesuvius. The city itself dates back to the 700's B.C.E. and eventually became the "summer houses" for rich senators and also a retirement place.
However, in 62 C.E. Pompeii experienced an earthquake that demolished some of the city. After rebuilding, in 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius erupted (blowing off over half of the mountain), entirely burying the city of Pompeii. The excavations for the site have been going on for over 200 years.
The city is practically X-Rated in the modern sense because there are lots of dirty pictures and inscriptions. There are also lots of frescos and most of the city is still somewhat intact. Some of the coolest things we saw were casts of humans that were killed by the volcano (the flesh deteriorated and left an empty hole which archeologists filled with plaster to create casts).
I hate to say that all archeological sites are the same but in Pompeii it is hard to explain what we saw except to say that after 4 hours we were really tired and cold and I have a lot of pictures to recreate the story for me. So that is really all I have to say about Pompeii. We got back on the bus, rode for 3 hours, and then had a group dinner. After that we grabbed some gelato and went to bed.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment