Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 7 Pompeii, Campania (1)

Pompeii is vast! It had a population of about 11,500 people and it would be very hard to see all of it in one day, so we chose to explore just the western end as this was the side where our campsite was and the entrance that our ticket said to use. Some of these photos are Keith's as he took many more photos than I did.

This is the forum - the market place, with various temples facing onto it.

Temple of Apollo

One of the main streets.

The Macellum, an indoor market building selling provisions. This is the remains of the central structure, which was a kind of rotunda.

The restored portico of the entrance to the Macellum, with shop fronts behind.

As we walked away from the forum area we passed many buildings which looked similar to this. The sign on the wall says Casa del Forno, and you can just see what I think are millstones through the gate. We couldn't go in though. Quite a lot of the buildings are blocked off for various reasons, i.e. preservation work being done or walls that are dangerous and need restoring. I get the impression the whole site is in continual need of restoration and preservation work - the elements are not kind on ruins once they have been uncovered.

Not the same building but still of an oven, with millstones in front. This was most likely a bakery, of which there were many.

The entrance to a house with a 'Beware of the dog' sign - in mosaic! It says 'Cave Canem'.

The House of the Faun

This was the largest residence found at Pompeii and takes up a whole city block. It has two gardens and two atriums. As you can see, it was very popular!

A faun is a mythological creature that is half goat, half human. This is a replica with the original being in the Archaeological Museum in Naples.

Opus sectile or inlay flooring.

The Alexander Mosaic below, not easy to see with the shadows and from this angle. Believe it or not this is a replica! The original is at the National Archaeological Museum at Naples and you can see what it looks like much better here. It's just incredible that someone took the time and trouble to make an actual replica mosaic - it must have taken months if not longer to do! But at least it means that the original is preserved and doesn't have people walking all over it. The original is an absolute masterpiece.

The two gardens with the Alexander mosaic under the roof between the two.

Typical view of a side street.

Stepping stones to cross the road, as raw sewage ran down the street! If you look close up you can just make out wheel ruts from carts passing through on either side of the right hand stone.

It was hard work walking on these old Roman roads and the pavements were quite high in places so hard work on the old knees too! As there is only one place where you can buy food within Pompeii we took a packed lunch with us, and sat on one of these pavements to eat our sandwiches! 

I'll do the rest of the photos in the next post. 

Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 6 Herculaneum, Campania

Herculaneum was Pompeii's smaller and more affluent neighbour and it was estimated to have a population of about 4-5,000 people.

When Vesuvius erupted in AD79, Herculaneum was hit by a number of pyroclastic surges containing mud, gas and hot ash which covered the town up to a height of a three storey building. People would have been killed instantly by the intense heat. By contrast, Pompeii which is about 5km further away from the volcano was hit by a reduced pyroclastic temperature, which preserved bodies and wooden objects in different ways.

These photos were taken from current town levels looking down into the ancient town. It shows you how deep the area was covered by the debris coming from Vesuvius.

The entrance to a house. There is obviously a fair amount of restoration work done to these buildings in order to preserve them for future generations, and to show visitors how the houses would have looked. Much has been damaged over the centuries by earlier restorations using the wrong kinds of material, plus climactic factors and tourists (graffiti and taking of souvenirs). The money made from visitors goes towards conservation of the sites (Herculaneum, Pompeii and a few other smaller sites).

A painted wall, showing an arch with birds on top. It's not in a very good state compared to the frescoes we later saw at Pompeii!

Inlay flooring.

More remains of wall decorations.

The House of the Wooden Partition

Some of the houses at the two archaeological sites have names due to special things found within them.

You will see the wooden partitions further down. This house is a large one and has a pool in the atrium with an open bit of roof above. The pool is called an Impluvium and is for collecting rainwater. There are other rooms off this atrium and there was a second floor above.

The open roof called a Compluvium with original carved decorations.

The pyroclastic flows at Herculaneum have, amazingly, preserved wooden objects which were carbonised by the heat.

Below, the wooden partitions (now preserved and covered with glass or plastic to protect them). Also found around the town were such things as ceiling beams, beds, tables and a cradle. A carbonised wooden bed was found in this house.

Outside there was a restaurant, a Roman take-away as it were. Most ordinary Romans did not have kitchens in their small houses, going out to get food prepared by other people. Only the rich had their own kitchens. The prepared food was stored in these large terracotta pots.

Changing room in the Womens' Baths

This is an amazingly preserved building and this room is where the ladies would have changed before going into the rooms with baths. They left their clothes in partitions on the shelf you can see. The mosaic floor is just amazing. 

Look at that octopus!

The House of Neptune and Amphitrite

This was not a paricularly large house, but it contains some special things. When you enter into an open atrium there is a marble pool, or impluvium. Straight in front of you is an amazing wall mosaic in another open courtyard. 

This courtyard was a small Triclinium or open air dining room. This amazing mosaic features the sea god Neptune and his wife, Amphitrite. Do click on the photos to view them larger as they come up much sharper and you will see much more detail.

Nymphaeum - a Roman water feature. The tank that contained the water would have been above the niche.

Close up you can see the remains of shell decorations around the arch.

The Boat Sheds

Originally there were no bodies found at Herculaneum so it was assumed that people had managed to escape. Then when excavations started around this lower area near the sea, remains were found. (The sea now is much further away). Some 300 bodies were found inside the boat sheds. It was thought they had come here to try to escape by boat but the intense heat from a pyroclastic flow had got to them first.  

The skeletons in the photo are not real, models have been made to evoke the awfulness of the situation for the townfolk.

You can see how far down the boat sheds were - they are the arches at the bottom of the image.

Try as we might, we could not find our way down there. There was a main ramp going down from this level, but it was roped off. People were walking around down there but we had no map of the site and after walking around for a few hours we decided to not bother trying again. 

It was also horribly humid both here and at Pompeii.  We are so used to dry heat that one forgets just how tiring humidity is.

Another view of the culprit, Vesuvius!

Our journey from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli to Sperlonga, then Herculaneum and Pompeii.

P.S. We just watched a really interesting documentary about Vesuvius last night which gave further insight into the volcanic blast and the preservation of bodies. Apparently this was first shown in 2010 but programmes about Pompeii seem to be quite popular in the last few years - in fact this is why we were interested enough to go and visit ourselves! The programme is available on Youtube here. It's called 'Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town' presented by Mary Beard.

Italy Trip Sept 2025 - Part 5 Sperlonga, Lazio and Vesuvius, Campania

We had a night at Sperlonga, about halfway between Rome and Naples, in a campsite right beside the beach. It was a lovely beach with plenty of public area available for once.  We walked all the way along the beach up to the castle thing you can see in the distance, me paddling all the way. Bliss! I was thinking I could be tempted to have a dip here, but I hate waves - something that all the Italian coastline seemed to have. In Mediterranean France the sea is much calmer.

This is the modern part of the town on the other side of the hill where the old town was perched. The next day we walked here via the beach again - a lot preferable to walking up the steep hill and down again! We had come here in search of the market, but it was hard to find. After asking several shopkeepers, we eventually did find it - but there was very little to it and hardly anyone there.  And that was our only experience of an Italian market!

Some pretty fishing boats in a marina on the way back to the campsite, contrasting with the modern boats.

Then it was time to drive further south to beyond Naples to the Roman sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii. This is a photo taken from Herculaneum of Vesuvius, the volcano which erupted in AD79 which buried both towns, killing an estimated 30,000 people. It last erupted in 1944, destroying some villages.

We booked a coach trip up to Vesuvius which took us from the station at Ercolano (Herculaneum) up to the parking zone on the mountain - the horizontal bit of road in the green area you can see below. The rest you had to walk.

It was a shame that it was so hazy (smoggy?) over Naples.

The path up felt like it went on forever! It actually takes about 40 minutes but it's all steep uphill.

After what seemed like an eternity we reached the edge of the crater. There are actually a few wooden hut tourist shops up here! I was able to get a stamp on that postcard above that I bought which proves that I have reached the crater (aside from my photos, of course 😀). It's a bit disappointing that the centre of the crater is filled in. It would be much more fun to be looking down into the bowels of the earth!

It doesn't show up very well here but on the right hand side just beneath the top there is some smoke coming out of the rocks!! Vesuvius is still alive.... 😱

There were some info panels talking about the bird life in the park - not that we noticed any, but it is a National Park and obviously there is all the area of the sides of the mountain, not just the crater area. They mentioned bee hotels for solitary bees, and monitoring of the Peregrine Falcon. Bird species are increasing since the area was designated a National Park and the mountain is a point of reference and a stopping off point for migratory birds which have crossed the sea. The park hosts about 150 species of birds, whether migratory, wintering, nesting or sedentary.

It was this trip in the bus where we think that Keith caught a cold/covid which I later got (and I'm absolutely sure it was covid)  - the downside to enclosed spaces with lots of people.

A few notes about Italy in general - the traffic was awful in the built up areas, so different from travelling around France and Spain in September.

We didn't go into Naples city but skirted the outskirts. What I couldn't get over was the amount of rubbish/trash everywhere by the sides of the roads. Wherever there was a layby was filled with sacks of rubbish, and general rubbish was just blowing around the sides of the roads. Totally shocking. Apparently this has been going on for years. 😠

And it was still green everywhere even this far south!