POMPEII!!!

Pompeii is one of the most amazing places I have ever been! If anyone comes to Italy and doesn't visit (or even worse, appreciate) the wonder that is Pompeii I feel it is a great tragedy. It is a history buff/archeologists dream come true! I probably could have spent several days there (at least if several of the sites weren't closed and locked).

Pompeii was burried under 22+ feet of ash and pumice in 79 c.e. It was so well preserved under all that ash until the 1700's when it was rediscovered. Excavations continue to this day.

(a working excavator)

If you want to learn more about it, you should buy a book or check it out on wikipedia (or go there yourself). We took tons of pictures so I will just post a bunch of pictures with captions to explain what/where they were.

Tip: if going to visit Pompeii (or Italy in general) expect to spend lots of money. They don't put plaques next to anything because they want you to spend an outrageous ammount on the books/tour guides/audio tours etc.

I hope you enjoy the pictures.

This is a pregnant woman (see the bump) buried. When they were doing the excavations and came across "bodies" it wasn't the actual body but a pocket of air. They filled this with plaster and then removed the plaster. Some of them though have actual skeletons that you can see.

(Uncle Pete, Peter, Rachel, Aunt Denise, Paul, Jessica, Nicole)

Trying to plan our route with our book and map (which both have numbers, but neither correlate with the other). This is beside the temple of Jupiter.

This is latin writing on a marble washing station in Terme (bath) del Foro in pompeii. The writing is in bronze.

(Uncle Pete, Aunt Denise, Peter, Jess, Nicole, Paul, Rachel)
Lunch time at the Temple della Fortuna Augusta.

Statues in the Macellum

(It's almost eerie how closely the name of that temple matches my last name!)

This is a picture of me (and unknown lady who stepped into the picture just as it was being taken) in front of a mosaic of Alexander the conqueror. This is in the Casa Del Fauno.

This is a picture of the Arco Onorario looking out the direction of Naples. The stones you notice in the street were to allow people to cross the street when it flooded without getting their feet wet. Before we found that out, Aunt Denise was saying that it was so that carts/carriages could pull up and let the ladies out without making them step in the street!

This is a picture of some columns in the Casa del Fuano.

In the house of the Tragic Poets there is this mosaic of a dog on the floor. Underneat the dog in Latin it says, "beware of the dog".

Aunt Denise loved all the frescos, as did we all. But she was particularly fond of them. This was one of her favorite rooms. She said this is what she wants her house painted like (minus the thousands of years, plus a little ash/pumice burial, that ages it). You could see how much she loved them in her eyes when she would look at them. She almost looked as though she would take a chunk off the wall if she could! hehe

(Nicole, Jess, Peter, Becky, Rachel, Aunt Denise)

This is us sitting on a grinder in one of the bakeries. You can see the brick oven in the back on the left.

By the end of the day, Paul was getting sooo tired! He had been there 4-5 hours by the time this picture was snapped!

This is a panoramic of the Teatro Grande (aka big theater; on the Left) and the Quadriportico dei Teatri (which was basically a place where the actors could "stretch their legs" during the long productions; on the right). My camera takes such great panoramics! I love it!

In many places in Pompeii the city was being held together by these metal support structures. (I imagine that is why so many of the sites were closed, they were having to be revamped to make them safe, otherwise, it could just be Italian laziness).

This was interesting because you could see that the mountain had pushed up against the outer walls of the buildings, bringing them up to the front of these stores/houses.

(Jessica, Aunt Denise, Rachel, Nicole, Peter)
This is in the Anfiteatro (stadium). It was absolutely amazing! More so when you thought that it had to be dug out of the ground made from the ash! Crazy! It was an awesome site!

As you can see, we did have a little silly fun along the way too!

This is a tomb in the necropolis (Necro=dead, opolis=city; city of the dead). What you can't tell from this picture is the tin roof is red. In Italy, when they find a body in the ruins they will put a red roof over it. If there is any special meaning behind the red roof (beyond that explained) I don't know.

This is an outer view of the Anfiteatro.

Vesuvius!!!

(I am ending with the volcano that started it all)