Pompeii (just 16 miles southeast of Naples) is the most-visited archaeological site in the world, due to its many and well-preserved ruins, left behind by a city buried in Vesuvius’s wake in the year 79 A.D. The ancient site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997, an excellent repository of details on quotidian life during Antiquity.
Although the Osci Tribe originally founded it, the Romans captured Pompeii during the Peninusla’s Social War, transforming it into a Roman Colony and naming it Cornelia Venera Pompeiana. Partly-destroyed by an earthquake in 62 A.D., the entire city and its splendid suburban villas did not last long enough to see complete reconstruction: Vesuvius not only erupted, but spewed enough lava so as to instantaneously cover the city – which also meant that its buildings (down to the decorations and ornamentation) and its people were immediately fossilized as if they had been placed in a sort of time capsule, remaining in large part intact.
The eventually-recovered bodies, particularly those belonging to “Julius Polybius’s family,” included Polybius himself (this Polybius being a laundry service owner) and a woman fleeing the volcano’s approaching aftermath with her jewelry in tow. These personages ended up serving as their excavators’ key to reconstructing the Pompeiians’ last moments of life.
Amazingly, the inhabitants did not have a clue that they were living in the shadow of a volcano that had been sleeping for over 1,500 years; it is no wonder that they were not able to get away in time (neither did Pliny the Elder, Admiral of the Roman Fleet, while attempting to save them). Pompeii was essentially forgotten for centuries, until the first archaeological explorations in the 18th Century.
Pompeii was a thriving Mediterranean port and a resort enclave for wealthy Romans; if it had not been for the remarkable state in which nature happened to maintain its remains, it might not have come to occupy the place in our imaginations that it does today. We know it for its civic buildings that line its wide streets, and for its domestic ones like the Surgeon’s House, the House of the Faun, the House of the Chaste Lovers and the equally-famous Villa of Mysteries (so-named for the interior murals depicting the initiation rites of the Cult of Dionysus).
Characteristic graffiti defines the exteriors of many of the buildings here, while refined frescoes narrating daily life are standard interior decor in many of Pompeii’s homes. From them the city’s principal archaeologists have inferred a sense of glamour, luxury, and the appreciation for beauty and art possessed by the ancient Romans that resided here.
Other of Pompeii’s treasures that survived long enough to tell the city’s story are its main forum and public structures, such as the Capitolium, the Basilica, the public baths, the triangular forum, its two theatres and the Stabian Baths.
Pompeii, along with the disappeared towns of Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata (the suburban community of ancient Oplontis) compose a UNESCO World Heritage Site, well-deserved for their ability like no other to recount the life and times of a fascinating bygone society.
Herculaneum is a sister-site to Pompeii; a Roman town buried by the same eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed the larger Pompeii. Partly lying under the modern Naples suburb of Ercolano, the site of Herculaneum hasn’t been fully uncovered and is much smaller and more manageable to visit than Pompeii. Destroyed in a different way, by a pyroclastic surge which killed inhabitants, carbonised wood and left the city buried under 16-25 metres of rock, the archaeological site offers a different kind of insight into the Roman world. Here you’ll still see preserved wooden lofts, wine racks and bedsteads. Most of the furniture – from a baby’s cot to household shrines – is now conserved in storerooms, but a few pieces remain on the site to give an evocative impression of Roman life.
When Vesuvius erupted in AD79, towns, villas and farms around the volcano were destroyed. Pompeii was buried under a layer of ash and pumice which was thinner than the covering over Herculaneum, and some of its residents (or looters) returned after the eruption to salvage valuables and sculptures. Herculaneum was preserved exactly as it was, and the different nature of its destruction has made it fascinating for archaeologists and for visitors. Discoveries of organic matter, of fruit, bread, wooden furnishings, writing tablets, upper floors, and even the contents of sewers, has helped with an understanding of Roman lifestyles and buildings. Herculaneum is thought to have been a relatively well-off small coastal town, quite different to the bigger, urban and more ‘ordinary’ Pompeii.
Herculaneum is much easier to explore than Pompeii. The archaeological site covers a small grid of streets, so it’s simple to cover these in a methodical fashion and keep track of what you’ve seen so far. Practical advice on preparing for a visit and getting to the site can be found below. From the ticket office, looking over the ruins, the nearest part below consists of round arches which were once on the seashore and would have been used for storing goods or boats. This is a good place to start your tour; a ramped passageway leads down and emerges by the arched vaults.
When these arches were excavated in the 1980s, archaeologists discovered what had happened to part of Herculaneum’s population. On the ancient beach and sheltered in the vaults were three hundred skeletons. Most of those under the arches were women and children, with male skeletons found on the shore outside. Perhaps they were sheltering or perhaps waiting for a deliverance which never came. Some of these bones are still preserved in-situ and are a poignant way to begin your exploration of a town whose life was cut off so suddenly on a summer’s day.
Once you’ve entered the ancient streets, as long as you have time I’d suggest just working your way around from one side of the site to the other. The site is basically composed of three streets heading north-east to south-west (at right angles to the seashore arches), with two streets crossing them. If you are in a hurry, there is a cluster of important and characteristic buildings towards the far end of the central street, and in the block which is then on your left.
Buildings at Herculaneum are labelled with a number and a name in Italian, which you can then look up using the site guide booklet or audio-guide. General features to look out for as you explore include the chances to see wooden upper floors, parts of decorative ceilings and wooden fittings such as racks for wine amphorae. Several handsome public water fountains, consisting of a tap hole, sculpted decorations and a trough, give an idea of the city’s practicalities and the civic pride its residents may have felt. On the central street (Cardo IV) a sign hanging between two buildings marks out the properties’ boundaries and owners. You can peer into shops, bars and bakeries and sometimes enter them; big stone vases set into worktops would have contained the food served up to customers who in Roman times would have obtained many of their meals out of the home. Many of the grander dwellings in the town had shops built into their street-facing façades, but once inside you enter a far more refined world where an imposing atrium or courtyard might be ornamented with a central pool, paintings around the walls and mosaics on the floor. The surviving exterior doesn’t always give a clue as to what treasures may remain inside, so poke around in all the buildings you have time to enter.
