From Rome to Pompeii in Only a Day

Is it crazy to say that Pompeii might have been even higher on my bucket list than Rome was? Back in 2014 or 2015 I saw an art exhibit called Presence and Absence by an artist named Tom Price. It was a set of sculptures of people who were there, but also not. They looked so realistic it was almost alarming, but there were pieces of them missing. I was really struck by it. I found out the artist’s inspiration for this work were the people of Pompeii who died nearly 2000 years ago when Mt. Vesuvius erupted, but whose bodies were still preserved all those years later. I didn’t know a ton about Pompeii at the time, but I knew I had to make it there someday. And lucky for me, “someday” was only a few years later.

During my short visit to Pompeii, I learned a lot about those people whose bodies were sort of left behind. Like for starters, they weren’t actually left behind. I guess I had assumed that these bodies were somehow mummified or fossilized in the positions in which they died, due to the hot lava that fell on them. Our tour guide quickly squashed that totally false assumption. The people of Pompeii were covered in ash and even foam-like substances from the volcano, not hot-molten lava, and it actually came after several warning signs. Of course, the people of Pompeii didn’t know them to be warnings of a volcano eruption, but I say that because most of the people of Pompeii fled while they could. The casts we now have don’t nearly represent the population of Pompeii. They’re also not mummified, petrified, fossilized or anything like that. Basically, archeologists discovered them as perfectly shaped cavities in the ash. Their bodies did decompose over the hundreds of years before they were discovered, but the ground in which they were buried left their shape. Archeologists filled those holes with plaster and created the “bodies” we now think of when we think of the ruins of Pompeii.

But really, that’s not even the best part of the ruins. I think that’s such a unique part of it that people sometimes overlook that the eruption preserved this whole city in a way nothing else could have, and nothing else did in any other part of the world. Even I overlooked it myself before my tour guide basically said “colosseum schmolosseum, this place is way more impressive.” I’m paraphrasing a bit, but I’m not paraphrasing when I tell you that this Italian man said “okie dokie artichokie” like it was going out of style.

Not only were certain landmarks preserved after all those years, but the city itself was. It truly is skeleton of an ancient city. The buildings are still standing where the people of Pompeii lived, and bathed, and bought their bread. And the streets between those buildings are still there too. You can even see the indention in the roads from where wagons would repeatedly drive over it.

We went in November, and our tour guide repeatedly said how great it was that we were visiting that time of year, because during the “busy season,” it’s incredibly crowded. One of the most popular sites in the town is the brothel, and he said during the busy season, the line just to get into this tiny building wraps through the streets. But we walked right in. Archeologists knew this building (and others like it) was a brothel not only by the penis arrows on the streets directing you to the building, but also by the pornographic “menu” painted on the walls. Very discreet. 

There was also an amphitheatre that had been restored in recent years to hold shows, which I thought was pretty cool.
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I’ve also got to show you this seemingly unnoteworthy picture of an oven. We know today that this building was a bakery not only by the oven structure in it, but also because when archeologists were uncovering Pompeii, there was a petrified loaf of bread in the oven! The oven had been protected from the eruption.

I wanted to visit Pompeii to see the casts, but I didn’t realize until I got just how amazing this ancient city is. It far exceeded my expectations, and I’m so glad I took a day out of my Rome trip to see it.