What is all this stuff falling from the sky…cough…

Our next stop takes us to Pompeii and Herculaneum, two cities destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius blew it’s top around 79 ad. People were so caught by surprise that many were buried in soot and ash before they knew what hit them. While the tragedy wiped these two costal towns off the face of the earth, it left a historical record of ancient Rome unique in the history of the world. Pompeii is huge and excavation has been going on there since the 1700. Most of Herculaneum has been dug up just recently and there is about 3/4th of the city yet to be exhumed. Between the two, Herculaneum is much more intact and filled with a more complete picture. You can see how the interior walls were painted in most of the buildings. They are very beautiful with individually designed decoration in each room. No two rooms are painted the same. The bathhouses and some of the homes are very close to how they were left, frozen in time for centuries. Floors have intricate mosaic work that shows the artistic level of the civilization. With a little dusting shops could reopen for business without much trouble. They even found cupboards with the food still in them. And the people? So caught by surprise that they were still sleeping. The archeologist injected plaster into the cavities where the bodies were to create an exact cast of what the people looked like and to some extent how they dressed. The most different thing about them is they are pretty short, around 5’. I loved both cities. If you only have time to see one, I would recommend Herculean. While it is smaller, it is much more complete and takes longer to go through because of the detail that can be found there.