Completely buried under a blanket of ash for 1500 years, it's a remarkable place to visit still. I had met a nice expat woman from NY/CA at breakfast who was now teaching English in Turin, and we set off together on the train. It's about a 45 minute train ride to the ruins, and my new friend taught me how to elbow my way onto a packed train, Italian style.
While a lot of the frescoes and artifacts and casts have been removed and put into the Archaeology Museum in Naples (and still...right now a great deal of it is on loan to a museum in Philadelphia right now) you can still see some of the touchingly decorated interior walls of what was once a person's home.
The site is absolutely enormous. It's essential to get a map of the key sites and artworks, as the alleys and lanes and orderly blocks of houses will go on forever, and after a while it's hard to know what you are actually looking at.
Although the day I went, it was quite warm and hazy, you could see the shadow of Vesuvius looming over the whole works, making it all the more creepy.
There is even a plaster cast of a dog that had been chained up outside a home.
And things like this; the base of a table:
Along with the houses and everyday items that tell the tale, there are three amphitheaters, baths, a gymnasium, temples, restaurants and bars, and of course, houses of ill repute.
There are stray dogs all over the site today, with warnings not to bother them. Many seemed quite content to be ignored.
You totally get a sense of melancholy wandering around the town.
On the fateful day in AD 79, the Volcano erupted, causing people to take shelter inside their homes. A great wave of heat radiated from Vesuvius, killing everyone instantly before unleashing enough ash and lava to leave very little trace of the existence of several nearby cities.
People died where they were hiding, in poses you would expect to be in if overcome by volcanic activity.
The very famous mosaic of Alexander the Great:
The officials and caretakers of the site have gotten a lot of flak lately, and UNESCO has even threatened to withhold funding since much of the site is exposed to the elements, and not being properly kept up. A house collapse a couple of years ago led to much anger and finger-pointing as to how to actually manage the site. There's an article here from last April in the NY Times.
But, yes, I can vouch: things are in ruins. :)
There were quite a lot of tourist- this is one of the most visited sites in Italy- but once you got out of the main sites, we had the place to ourselves. They were nice enough to provide plenty of water fountains, as it was almost 80 degrees and very humid that day. Shade and water and short breaks were necessary.
It's odd and creepy, it fueled some nightmares, and I'm glad I saw it.
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