Towering to the east of Naples, Vesuvius is a constant presence and climbing to its top is an impressive experience. Its victims from nearly 2000 years ago, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Oplontis form a one-off exhibit of the Roman world stopped in its tracks. The well-known attractions of Pompeii and Vesuvius tend to overshadow (the latter literally) Herculaneum, perhaps unjustly. Much less visited, again perhaps unfairly, are the Villa Poppaea at Oplontis and the remains at Stabia (Castellmare). All are fascinating, though without Vesuvius they would be remembered merely (if at all) as more old Roman remains in an area with plenty of old Roman remains. SightsPompeii T 081-8575347, http://www.pompeiisites.org Apr-Oct 0830-1930, last entrance 1800. Nov-Mar 0830-1700, last entrance 1530. €8.26, including same-day visits to Oplontis, Stabia and Boscoreale. Herculaneum and Oplontis have their fans but there’s a reason that Pompeii is the most famous of Vesuvius’ victims. It may not be as luxurious as Oplontis or as well-preserved as Herculaneum, but the sheer scale of Pompeii is staggering. Here is an entire Roman town, once home as many as 20,000 people, ruined yes, but in many ways extraordinarily intact. The main problem may be deciding what to see, or exhaustion after having tried to see everything. The fact that many of the site’s best houses are often closed is perhaps a blessing in disguise – at least some of these decisions are made for you. Much of the wonder of the place is to be had simply by wandering around, looking into ordinary houses that even the most complete guidebooks don’t mention. Some of the most affecting parts are the most ordinary: tracks on the roads where carts have worn down the stones, shop signs advertising their wares, simple mosaics warning you to “beware of the dog”. The following are some of the many highlights. ForumAfter entering through Porto Marina, the first big space you come to is the Forum. This was the centre of public life in the city and the main temples (such as the Temple of Apollo and the Temple of Jupiter) are based around it. In the (Roman) public toilets to the northwest, amphorae and other finds are piled high on shelves as well as casts of the dead, whose bodies rotted away, leaving moulds in the solidified ash into which plaster was poured by excavators. Forum Thermal BathsTo the north of the Forum, this baths complex was the only one still in use after the earthquake of 62AD. It is divided into men’s and women’s sections, each containing a frigidarium, tepidarium and calidarium. The men’s tepidarium is particularly well-preserved, with rows of plaster figures which seem to hold up the barrel-vaulted ceiling. House of the Tragic PoetNorth of the Thermal Baths, the House of the Tragic Poet is most notable for the mosaic in its doorway: under a picture of a chained dog it warns you: cave canem (beware of the dog). House of the FaunFurther north, on vicolo di Mercurio, is one of Pompeii’s most famous and elegant houses, the House of the Faun. This is a grand villa, and must have been home to some of Pompeii’s most important citizens. Its two most important finds, the dancing bronze statue of a faun and the gigantic million-tessera mosaic of the Battle of Issos, are in the Museo Archeologico in Naples, though a copy of the faun is here. House of the VettiPossibly Pompeii’s most popular attraction, the House of the Vetti, near the House of the Faun on vicolo dei Labirinto, is an excellently preserved treasure trove of Pompeian painting. Much of the sumptuous decoration here is from the period after the earthquake of 62AD. The exceedingly well-endowed figure of Priapus in the doorway symbolized fertility and also served to ward off evil spirits. Inside frescoes depict mythological scenes such as Ixion being tied to a wheel by Hephaestus as punishment for having looked at Zeus’s wife and Dionysus waking Ariadne. A frieze running around the walls depicts cupids busy selling perfume, gathering grapes and doing target practice. Erotic panels decorating the servants’ quarters have led to questions about the role of servants in the Roman world. At the time of writing the house was closed for restoration. House of VenusThe beautiful and astonishingly well-preserved fresco here of Venus riding in a shell through the waves accompanied by cupids predates Botticelli’s more famous version by about one and a half thousand years. Small theatre (Odeon)Pompeii’s semi-circular small theatre, or Odeon, is more complete than its bigger neighbour, the Large Theatre, and is an extremely beautiful space which would have been used for mime, plays and musical events. The Odeon has very particular acoustics: if you stand on the grey stone in the middle of the stage, equidistant from the ends of the seating, and talk, you will have the extremely strange sensation of being in a very small room, with your voice bouncing back at you. Villa dei MisteriOutside the city walls, this large country villa has Pompeii’s best- preserved fresoes: an extraordinary cycle depicting the initiation of a girl into the cult of Dionysus. At the time this cult was banned by Rome but remained popular, especially in the south of Italy. City wallsA walk around the outside of the city walls enables you to escape the crowds and take in Pompeii from a different angle. There is also plenty to see here: the gates to the city and some impressive tombs. AmphitheatreHolding approximately 12,000 people and built around 80BC, this is one of the oldest Roman amphitheatres, and may have been used as a model for others. It held gladiatorial combats, as well as events such as the recreation of great sea battles. Unlike some modern stadiums it had a velarium, or cover, which could be stretched across in case of rain. At one point, after riots between fans of Pompeii and Nuceria, the Roman senate banned games here for 10 years. Oplontis via Sepolcri 1, Torre Annunziata T 081-8621755. Apr-Oct 0830-1930, last entry 1800; Nov-Mar 0830-1700, last entry 1530. €5, or see Herculaneum, for details of combined tickets. From the front of station (Torre Annunziata) turn left, then right at the end of the road. It's a five-minute walk. See Getting around It is thought that Nero’s second wife, Sabina Poppaea, lived here at the Villa Poppaea before she married him and was supposedly kicked to death for her pains. The evidence is slightly sketchy, however. What is sure is that this small site has a profusion of excellently preserved Roman wall-paintings, especially in the triclinium (room 14) and the calidarium (room 8) in the south- western corner of the site. There’s also a peaceful cloistered area and the whole place retains the comfortable feel of a wealthy out-of-town villa. Herculaneum corso Resina 6, Ercolano, T 081-7390963. Apr-Oct 0830-0730, last entry 1800; Nov-Mar 0830-1700, last entry 1530. €8.50 including same-day visits to Oplontis, Boscoreale and Stabia. €13.50 includes all the former plus Pompeii over a five-day period. Audioguide €5.16. From the station walk straight down the hill for about five minutes to reach the ruins. See Getting around Not far from Naples, Herculaneum resembles Naples’ Centro Storico strongly in its traditional Roman street layout, with perpendicular streets (Cardo III, IV and V) coming off two main east-west roads: the Decumanus Inferiore and Decumanus Massimo. It is a small site in comparison to Pompeii, partly because so much of it remains under an enormous quantity of volcanic rock and mud. This volcanic mud is the secret of Herculaneum’s preservation: much more than Pompeii’s mixture of ash and pumice, Herculaneum’s mud solidified and sealed in the town below, preserving organic substance and the upper storeys of houses. The scale of the eruption is appreciable when crossing the bridge to the southern edge of the site. Below is what used to be the seafront. The cliff behind gives some kind of idea of the enormous quantity of mud that engulfed the town. Some three hundred or so bodies were found here at the old shoreline in the 1980s: awaiting rescue from the sea, their bodies carbonized by the extreme heat (probably around 400ºC) of Vesuvius’s pyroclastic cloud before being buried deep in mud. In the Casa del bel Cortile three of these figures are on display, their skeletons still clinging together. Less gruesomely, many of Herculaneum’s buildings and mosaics are in exceptionally good nick. The Casa di Nettuno e Anfitrite on Cardo IV has a beautiful mosaic of the eponymous couple, and just to the south the well-preserved women’s baths have an excellent mosaic floor. Where the lower Decumanus crosses Cardo V a Thermopolium, a shop which sold food, still has intact some ceramic pots set into rectangular counters. Just to the south of this is the town brothel. At the southern edge of town, between Cardo III and Cardo IV, the trunk of a Roman pear tree was found in the garden of the Casa dell’Albergo. Pear trees have been planted here again to recreate the orchard that might have once been. Ercolano Villa Campolieto, corso Resina, 283, Ercolano, T 081-7322134 http://www.villevesuviane.net Tue-Sun 1000-1300, free. Details of other villas from Ente per le Ville Vesuviane, at this address. If you have time to spare in modern-day Ercolano, there are some impressive 18th-century villas with gardens which can be visited. A five-minute walk to the east of the ruins, Villa Campolieto is the centre for the Ente per le Ville Vesuviane, an organization trying to resurrect many of these crumbling mansions. Villa Ruggiero is a little northeast of here. Villa Favorita, slightly further east, was closed at the time of writing. Vesuvius Buses, cars and taxis go as far as a car park from where the crater is a 20-minute walk up a loose stone path. Entrance to the top of the volcano is €5.16. Buses run from Ercolano station at 1010, 1130 and 1240, returning from Vesuvius at 1240, 1350 and 1500. Tickets, €3.10, are only available from Bar Vesuvio, outside the station. Minibus taxis also do the run from outside the station at €10 per person return, though they will only go when there are enough passengers to make it worth their while. Towering 1281 metres above the Bay of Naples, and over the lives of everyone who lives there, Vesuvius is far from being the world’s biggest or most active volcano, but it’s probably its most famous. Around a million people live and work in the communi vesuviani on and around its base, within a radius which could be destroyed in the first 15 minutes of a medium to large scale eruption. Hundreds of thousands more would be at least seriously affected by such an eruption. Scientific opinion seems divided only about when, rather than if, Vesuvius will erupt again. A report published in Science Magazine in November 2001 found that 8 km under Vesuvius is a 400 sq km reservoir of molten rock, much bigger than previously thought. Climbing to its summit and peering down into its crater is well worth the effort, though it can be somewhat humbling, and on windy days downright precarious. Souvenir stalls selling postcards and black stone buddhas, skulls, elephants and winged horses add a surreal touch to the experience. (The Somma Rim, which forms the distinctive second, lower peak, is the remains of a previous volcano which collapsed some 17,000 years ago.) When Vesuvius erupted in 79AD it hadn’t erupted for about 700 years, the summit was wooded and it seems that the local population were unaware of the mountain’s volcanic nature. Pliny the Younger described the eruption in two letters, detailing the column of ash which rose from the volcano in the shape of a pine tree and the pyroclastic flow which killed many of Herculaneum’s victims. Explosive volcanic eruptions on the massive scale experienced in 79AD are now referred to by vulcanologists as ‘plinian’ after Pliny, and it seems that Vesuvius goes through a cycle where a period of dormancy is followed by a plinian or sub-plinian eruption and then a period of smaller eruptions. It may be that the sub-plinian eruption of 1631, which followed a long period of calm, and which killed around 3,500 people, was the beginning of such a cycle. This cycle may have ended with the most recent eruption, in 1944, when 26 people were killed. In total there have been about 35 eruptions since 79AD. Other than 79AD, six previous plinian eruptions of Somma/Vesuvius have been identified. Of these, those of 5960 and 3580BC are among the biggest-known European volcanic eruptions. Recent digs at Nola, just outside Naples, have uncovered Bronze Age settlements buried by an eruption of the volcano around 2000BC. Finds include intact huts, vases and headgear decorated with a boar’s tusks.
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