Pompeii

Saturday 9th September
The owner of the villa next door left his car keys in a plastic bag on his gate so Adam was able to move their neighbour’s car then get his out without too much difficulty and we headed off to Pompeii. As is our want be were a little bit geographically embarrassed and found ourselves in an outer suburb of Naples called Torre Annunziata a little bit further away from Naples than Torre del Greco. Torre del Greco is a poor dockside area where the housing is not good but infinitely better then Torre del Greco. As we drove around looking for road signs to Pompeii we became increasingly aware that it was not a very salubrious suburb and looked more like an urban battle field. Rubbish disposal and collection in Italy usually involves householders taking their bags of rubbish to very large metal bins that are portable waste transfer containers which are hoisted up by hydraulic arms and their contents emptied into the back of large rubbish trucks. In Torre Annunziata the householders take their bags of rubbish to huge and growing mounds of festering garbage in the middle of the road and around which we had to steer. Rosalind and Sheila started to feel increasingly vulnerable and asked Adam “please get us out of here quickly.” Adam responded with his accelerator and we were all feeling a lot happier when we found a road to Pompeii which although close by seemed ‘miles away’ from Torre Annunziata.
Pompeii is a fabulous site and far bigger than we expected and to put it into some context:
An earthquake in AD 62, which shook Pompeii and damaged some of the buildings, was merely a prelude to the tragic day in AD 79, when Vesuvius erupted, engulfing the city and its inhabitants with a terrible storm of cinders and ash. When the remains of Pompeii were discovered around 1750 it looked as though a spell had been cast to freeze all life. The bodies of people were unearthed along with their houses, temples and works of art and everyday objects. The first archaeologists removed the most important and portable finds which became part of the royal collection and were then transferred to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in the Decumano Maggiore area of Naples.
We were very pleasantly surprised how well many of the buildings had been preserved and we were able to clearly see frescos on many of the walls. It was a very warm humid day and climbing the hill from the entrance gate to the sites of the public building was a bit of a struggle, but well worth the effort. It would be easy to spend days exploring all of the various areas but we concentrated on the main road called Via dell’abbondanza, with excursions along the Vicolo del Lupanare to see the hospititium (I guess this is the origin of the word ‘hospitality’) or caupona. Most of the guests at this establishment were gladiators, as more important visitors were put up in private homes. In the hospititium and in the lupanares, or brothels, paintings and graffiti depicts that world and the specific services offered by waitresses and prostitutes, girls and boys, to satisfy their clients. Apparently these sites are the most visited and photographed parts of the whole town. Our other ‘excursion was to see the gladiator’s barracks, the large forum or theatre and a small version of the colosseum. The list of houses that each have particular features worth seeing is long, so it is sufficient to say that a day spent exploring Pompeii is a day well invested. Most of the photographs that I took at Pompeii are as follows:









One of the Lupanare, hospititium or caupona



Note the depth of the ruts worn by chariots and carts





The next two pictures are of casts made from mummified bodies that were recovered from the ash







A fresco on the outside of a building



Adam propping up the bar at an inn









The colosseum



The ‘gladiators’




We marvelled at these structures that were all created without any mechanical help.






On the way back to Positano, just before Meta, the road utilises about five long tunnels and as we were approaching one of the tunnels we saw there had been a four car crash on the other side of the road to us. What we think happened was the driver who was exiting the tunnel had not had time to adjust to the sunlight and failed to see a car joining the road from a small lane on his right. Two more care following closely behind also did not have time to stop. It is a very real hazard particularly if you use transition sunglasses and you keep them on in the tunnels. The time taken for the transition is too long when exiting tunnels into bright sunlight. The as we drove up the hill to cross the peninsula and around a tight bend there was a car coming towards us; this was no a major issue given Adam’s experience of the narrow roads. However on this occasion on the outside of the car was a motorbike overtaking on the bend. Adam did not have any time to react other than look quickly into his rear vision mirror after the bike had squeezed between the two cars at high speed and developed a speed wobble. We were all a little shaken by the incident, particularly Adam who said that he thought the motor cyclist was going under the rear wheels of our car. I assured Adam that was not the case and that he had straightened up and speed off. To tell the truth I had no idea, but I figured that if he had come off there was not much that any of us were going to be able to do; and he had been the architect of his own fate.
We had a large plate of antipasto on the roof top patio and Adam and Rosalind decided that they were going down into the town as there was a festival that night, to celebrate the new moon. Sheila and I were to tired, but we did go out onto the street and watch a few of the bands walk past playing their drums, trumpets and lager phones. The music seemed Moorish to me and the stomping of the lager phone players made it all seem very pagan.
The music did not go on until too late though Adam and Rosalind did not get back until 0430 after many ‘limon cellos’ and dancing on the beach front with some other Australians that they had met in a bar.