Today we said goodbye to our
temporary home in Sorrento and set out for the big city of Rome. The biggest event on our itinerary today was
a tour of Pompeii.
I doubt that any of you
well-educated readers need an explanation of the ruins of Pompeii, but I might
as well give a little intro anyway.
Pompeii was an extremely wealthy city in the shadow of Mt.
Vesuvius. This region had been home to
civilization for centuries before the Romans took control of the area. As a Roman city, it was known for its
opulence, its rich trade and for its tragic end. The amazing difference between this
excavation and other ruins is that the volcanic eruption that buried the city
in ash stopped city life exactly as it was in AD 79. The types of information gleaned from these
ruins sheds light on Roman culture in ways that other ruins could not.
We were able to tour several
different types of ruins, but didn’t even scrape the surface of the entire
site. We entered the city through the
port gate—the volcanic activity of Vesuvius has since moved the coastline far
away from the city. Following the main
road towards the city center, we were actually able to walk on the paving
stones from the original city. Our first
stop was the city center. The ruins
surrounding this area were all public buildings including a wool market. An interesting fact about the wool market was
that this area was identified by huge containers filled with human urine. Apparently, the residents of the city
collected their urine in large containers for the purposes of cleaning wool and
using as other balms and beauty products.
This practice was so much a part of Roman society that the Emperor
Vespasian imposed a urine tax for the sale of the publicly collected
commodity.
Students were able to see a
few plaster casts of victims of the volcano.
Some of these casts show people in various stages of attempting to
flee. One cast even showed a dog that
died along with the residents of Pompeii.
The tour included a walk
through the public bath house—complete with the original mosaic floor from
almost 2000 years ago. Following the
bath house, we walked through the largest and smallest houses in the city. Some of these structures contained
decorations and inscriptions that were still very visible even after the burial
and excavation. We walked through a
bakery, several shops, the hall of justice, the temple of Apollo, and the
wagon-wheel-rutted streets.
After finishing our ruins tour, the students were set loose to eat lunch and buy some souvenirs. The souvenir vendors were a little pushy here, but some of the students were proud of themselves for haggling on the price a little bit. Even so, some of them may have ended up buying an extra item or two due to the very friendly dealers.
After finishing up at Pompeii, we loaded the bus and headed off to Rome. Four hours later, we checked into our hotel just outside the city center of Rome. Since we were still early for dinner, the students were able to do a little bit of exploring. One group was able to visit two Basilicas nearby while others made it all the way down to near the Roman Forum. After dinner, another group walked down to Piazza di Venezzia for a night view of the ruins while the rest of the group relaxed in the hotel. Tomorrow we will do a walking tour of much of Rome, so hopefully everyone will get some good sleep tonight.
