2007 August | Family Affairs and other matters

POMPEII

21. August 2007

What an amazing place. It is the first time I have successfully managed to look around a ruin and actually been able to envisage what it might have been like. In times past, I would wander around the ruins of some castle or other with my husband and my children and he would point to a pile of rubble in the corner of a slightly bigger pile of rubble and say “oh, that must have been where the fireplace was” and I would be thinking “I have not even managed to envisage the bloody walls of the castle, let alone the fireplace”.

Pompeii, on the other hand is extremely well preserved, owing to the fact that instead of being consumed by molton lava, it was covered, over a three day nightmare in 79AD in a 30 metre layer of pumistone and ash. It lay undiscovered until about 200 years ago. According to our guide, about 15,000 to 20,000 people were living there at the time of the tragedy, in what looked to me like pretty bloody comfortable conditions. They had an underground water system (with lead piping that apparently did not make everybody go mad because a layer of calcium protected them from being poisoned by the lead), ovens (that still look exactly like the pizza ovens they use today), damp coursing, out-houses, Roman baths, theatres, pavements, brothels, temples, shops, bars and even one-way and pedestrian roads. A lot of frescoes and marble creations remain and you could even see the paintings on a young boys wall, covered with the faces of his heroes, including Nike, the god of something, with wings in the shape of the Nike symbol.

The brothel was fascinating. Because it was a port town, they had kindly thought to line the walls of the brothel with pervy (aka erotic) paintings above the different private rooms, which meant that foreigners who did not know the direct Italian translation of “doggy style” or “missionary position” or “hand job” could simply point at the corresponding picture. There was even ancient graffiti on the walls, detailing what the men had thought of each particular woman.

Other interesting relics of the disaster are the incredibly well preserved bodies. Two of them lying in glass cases. One of a young male slave, caught in the final agony of death, his perfect teeth on show in a hideous grimace.

I was however wrong about the volcano. It last erupted in 1944 and is apparently long overdue for another explosion. It is still alive and well, but seemingly the 700,000 or so Neapolitans living on the slopes or in the shadow of Vesuvius have chosen not to live anywhere else. Admittedly the lemons we saw being sold outside are the biggest things I have seen – all that lava-rich soil must be doing something. My friend however did manage to embarrass herself on the way back when she pointed to a boat and said “god, look at the size of those bloody lemons, they are the size of footballs!”, to which our guide said “no madam, those are round, yellow fishing floats” .

It was easy to imagine the bustling life of Pompeii. You could almost imagine the shops and bars being open, the horses pulling the carriages, the people going about their daily lives. Our guide told us that everybody, rich or poor had access to the theatre and the baths and talked about the extended feasts, celebrations and orgies. He must have mentioned “Carpe Diem” at least 4 times and certainly judging by the amount of opulence and luxury still there to see, it seems an entirely apt description of a long lost moment in time.

AMALFI COAST

19. August 2007

2 Comments

Not sure this is going to work, I am trying to understand an Italian Computer, so it may go horribly wrong. We are staying in the most beautiful hotel on the Amalfi Coast. The view from our hotel room is absolutely stunning. Dramatic limestone cliffs, covered with lush vegetation drop into the sea, with Positano [...]