ewx | Italy: Pompeii

In Naples our priorites were pizza, a dish which reached its modern form in that city, and Pompeii. The former we managed both nights we were there, and very nice it was too. I don't know if the waiter at the first place had misidentified us as French or was just using it as a lingua franca, but he spoke to us as much in (restaurant) French as anything else.

Pompeii is easily reached via the Circumvesuviana local railway, and the Pompeii station is just outside the site gate. People will try to sell you water between them, don’t buy any, there is drinking water on tap inside. There is also a restaurant near the forum, so there’s no need to lug food around. I can recommend reading a book on Pompeii such as Mary Beard’s before your visit, though we got plenty out of it with a guidebook.

The temple of Apollo:

The inscription on the sundial reads:

L·SEPVNIVS·L·F
SANDILIANVS
M·HERENNIVS A·F
ERIDANVS
DVO·VIR·I·D
D·S·P·F·C

The temple of Isis:

The inscription on the entrance records the restoration of the temple, supposedly at the expense of a six-year-old.

The temple of Jupiter:

Statue of Eumachia:

Paintings can be found on the walls. Some have faded to nothing since being exposed to their and others carried off to the museum in Naples (a superior fate to decaying in situ).

In the baths:

The well-known dead bodies are actually plaster casts made in the modern era; the actual bodies decayed centuries ago, leaving holes for excavators to find.

The more central areas are, of coures, full of tourists:

Nevertheless it wasn’t that hard to find the occasional empty street:

A street-crossing. The usual explanation for the high kerbs is the quantity of rubbish in the street, though Beard points out in the book above that the streets probably doubled as drainage channels.

We visited the brothel, possibly Pompeii’s most notorious building.

On exit we were very amused to be asked directions to the graveyard by two goths and accompanying mother. The tombs can be found outside the gates of the city: