The Streets of Pompeii and Herculaneum

Back in March, Yolanda and I got married, and in June we went on our honeymoon to Sorrento in Italy.  Sorrento is on the Bay of Naples, an area steeped in history - home to the ancient sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius.  Yol and I have an interest in history, and in particular Roman history, and so the chance to go walk amongst the ghosts of 79AD was too good to miss!

We'd gone out to Sorrento for a week, and during our week we managed to fit in several trips including a walk up Mount Vesuvius, a tour of Pompeii, and a tour of Herculaneum.  We also visited the Martello Gardens on the Isle of Ischia, a coach drive along the Amalfi Coast, and spent time walking around Sorrento itself, taking in the history and enjoying the Italian summer!

Pompeii is on the south side of Mount Vesuvius, and was engulfed in ash and pumice in the eruption of 79AD.  The inhabitants of Pompeii met a horrendous end, being suffocated by the falling ash as the market town was slowly buried, where it lay undisturbed until 1599 when it was rediscovered.  Excavations began properly in 1748, but even to this day the entire town hasn't been uncovered.

The remains of Pompeii were fairly well preserved under the pumice and ash, and years of careful excavation means that today we have the opportunity to walk in the streets on the very flagstones where Romans once walked, carts once rolled, and sewage once flowed.  Luckily they've been cleaned up since then!

As mentioned earlier, the inhabitants of Pompeii who didn't manage to escape were overcome by the lack of oxygen, and their bodies were coated in ash which solidified over time.   When the bodies decayed, they left hollows in the solidified ash that preserved their shape, and archaeologists excavating the site discovered these hollows and poured in plaster, which resulted in plastercasts of the body shapes.  Some of these plastercasts are on display in Pompeii, a reminder of the human toll taken by the eruption.

The full set of photos from Pompeii can be seen here on Flickr.

Herculaneum is a smaller town than Pompeii, located to the west of Vesuvius, and served as the Roman equivalent of a resort - it's where the weathly Roman citizens went on holiday.  The streets are much more narrow, there was better sanitation, and it was located on the seafront.

When Vesuvius erupted, the town was affected in a different way to Pompeii - the inhabitants of Herculaneum met an equally grisly demise, but instead of suffocation they died from exposure to volcanic pyroclastic flows, where super-hot gasses and rock were hurled at 450mph through the town.  The effect was to instantly incinerate the flesh of anyone caught in the flow. Their skeletal remains have been slowly uncovered by archaeologists in the boathouses of Herculaneum, where the citizens were trying to escape from the volcano.

For the full set from Herculaneum, please take a look here on Flickr.

Thanks for reading!