Meanwhile, in ancient Rome
18 Aug 2024We went to Pompeii and it was a lot.
Pompeii and Vesuvius
My partner and I are both reformed history geeks. We’re not so occupied with the past these days but I think either of us would have said that we were pretty knowledgable on Pompeii for people who hadn’t been there in person. We’d know to look in the hortus if we couldn’t find Caecilius.
Pompeii is properly crazy though.
Pompeii is super big
I don’t think we were ready for the scale of the area you can walk around. It’s probably the size of your local small town, except that when you are there you probably don’t look in everyone’s house, each shop, the churches, whatever they have there. With Pompeii, you do explore in that way so it is a big old site.
This means it breaks through the buffers in your head saying it’s an open air museum or recreation or something. It just is a Roman town where people were busy doing their Roman stuff.
Life in the area basically hasn’t changed
There are deep gashes in the cobbles from where cart wheels repeatedly dug in to the surface as traders rushed around. Get a taxi at the local airport and see how that ride goes.
Excavations have revealed seventy fast food joints. Big stone counters with clay pots of local fish and veg and such. Head into Naples and walk along Via Foria and see how far you can get without buying a snack.
The Romans loved drawing dicks everywhere. Dicks are funny and stupid. This is still true today.
The whole volcano thing
Pompeii isn’t as close to Vesuvius as I thought. Really a lot of people live much closer now, and the same was true in AD79. It’s big and imposing but probably if you live there you don’t stare at it so much.
That there Vesuvius
It’s pretty hefty though. The crater is bigger than the quarry we used to sneak into back in Cornwall. Also it starts at basically the sea, so you get the full effect of the height. If you go to Scafell then you’re probably already starting most of the way up.
