The Amalfi Coast: Village Cliffhangers

It’s a tragedy for someone to go to Naples and not see the Amalfi Coast. If you’ve got at least three days in Naples, then you must see the Amalfi Coast, considering how easy it is to get there, especially if you’ve a regional Arte Card, which gives you free access to transit all the way across Campania, and that includes everything to, from, and in the Amalfi Coast.

Getting there

We woke up in the morning and went over to the train station, which was conveniently next to the hotel. We jumped onto the L2 metro. This is where maps are confusing. They show the L2 as ending at Gianturco, but actually it goes on to Salerno. It’s a super comfortable metro/train car, and many of the cars are double deckers, so if you’re lucky enough, go up. The metro is really an endless series of surprises. Remember in my last blog, where we went on a tour of the underground aquifer 60 meters below the city? Imagine then, when they built the metro, I suppose they had to go below that even! There’s just layer upon layer of stuff going on underneath that town.

We rode the train to Salerno, not sure if we wanted to get out and walk around. Since our next Amalfi bus wasn’t until noon and we were there thirty minutes early, we decided to walk around. We grabbed a couple of huge scoops of really delicious gelato and walked down the pedestrian mall, which was right out the train station. After spending some time milling around, we went over to catch the bus. I can’t say how Salerno is, but I can tell you that it wouldn’t be a bad spot to base your visit to Naples. Since the L2 takes you to the main station, and to the old town, it’s really quite accessible. Also Salerno is fairly flat around the old town, has really long beaches, and is relatively cheap, especially compared to the Amalfi Coast. So to any visit of the two regions, I might even recommend staying in Salerno. These were, of course, my thoughts before I went to Sorrento.

random view from the bus

The bus fills up even in the winter months, though it’s at a greater frequency in summer. There’s also no way to reserve your spot. So be warned.

The Amalfi Coast

The Amalfi Coast is composed of a mountain range that ends abruptly into the sea. At some point in ancient history, some crazy bastards decided to put villages on the sides of these mountains, which not only became marvels of civil engineering, but also easily defensible as they were impossible to get to by land. It’s really amazing visiting these places, and just riding the bus down across the coast, as not only the buildings seem impossibly built, but also the road. The ancient dwellers here must have been quite skilled at terracing, and actually, having been in many places across Italy, I can say that perhaps this is just a skill that Italians must have possessed to an advanced degree throughout their history. The Amalfi Coast is perhaps the most impressive display of this though.

Amalfi

We rode the local SitaSud bus, the fare included in our Arte Card. It was easily marked to Amalfi, right outside the train station. Then we just sat back and relaxed, catching in all the amazing sites.

The tight curves were pretty crazy. The buses all have a tactic that, when they come to a sharp turn, they’ve got to honk to make sure people knew they were coming. The streets all had mirrors, and were well marked about where a car should stop to give way to buses making the corner, since the bus often needed the whole street to turn. Though it seemed fairly apparent to me that Italians are in no condition to worry about silly street markings!

I would love to stay in Salerno or Sorrento, bus in and visit a couple of the villages each day, spending the days soaking up the sun on the beach and drinking coffee and writing in the coffee shops. But we didn’t have time for such leisure, which meant we had to enjoy them from our window.

Amalfi

We did get out at two places though. Our first stop was actually the bus’s final destination: Amalfi.

Amalfi

Amalfi is also the name of a little village that’s basically right in the middle of the coast. I suppose the coast could have just as easily been named the Castiglione Coast, or the Conca dei Marini Coast, but Amalfi happened to be in the middle, so it's the Amalfi Coast.

looking up the main street

Amalfi dates from about the 6th century, when it was a bustling trading port, exchanging gold from Egypt, slaves from Europe, and salt from Sardinia—back in that time Africans were keeping Europeans as slaves, and Europeans mostly other Europeans, and Arabs just kept everyone as slaves. True story. Why anyone is surprised that Europeans took Native Americans as slaves is beyond me. There was a point of decrease in slavery in Europe, when the Pope said you can’t keep a Christian as a slave in the 9th century, which meant that the only source of slaves would be non-Christians (pagans, Muslims, or Jews). Though to be fair, most slavery occurring in Continental Europe was abolished by the 15th century, and the rest of the world lagged quite a bit behind in that.

exploring one of the upper roads

Anyways, Amalfi is a really beautiful gorge of a town. It goes straight up and straight down, and you can follow it up the gorge for about half a kilometer or so of solid buildings that all cling to the side of mountains. There are a great mix of cafes, some cheap places to eat, lots of expensive places to eat, you only have to open your eyes and look. We found a place to the back of the village, that was a fairly cheap bistro. 6 euros for a plate of pretty delicious pasta, and 5 euros for a bottle of wine. When we arrived, we realized there were two ladies we had seen on the train and on our bus. Small world.

enjoying some local wine

There's a really interesting church in the main square. The church dates back to the 9th square, and has some key aspects from all across the Mediterranean fusing into it. It's just an absolutely beautiful building, and a perfect place to find peace in an already peaceful place.

Amalfi Cathedral from the main square

the front steps of Amalfi Cathedral

Looking up

Positano

If you want a really expensive place to stay, then it’d be Positano, which is apparently where all the Hollywood stars vacation. And who can blame them. We thought Amalfi was incredible, Positano is perhaps even moreso, though it’s also that much moreso difficult to navigate. Where at least Amalfi has a flat interior, Positano is just built on the side of a mountain. We got off the bus at one end, and walked through the town all the way to the other. There is a lot of climbing in that town, I won’t lie!

arriving in Positano

starting our walk

Looking down at the cathedral

Positano was founded in the medieval times, and came to its peak in the 16th century, and by the 19th century, it wasn't doing so well, so most people from there had moved to a New York City tenement, wondering why the hell they moved. So they got angry, joined with the Sicilians, and started the mafia. Also true story.

St. Francis with a view

no need for a stairmaster in this town

Positano is not for people who like things easy though. If you hate stairs, skip the town. The whole city is climbing. But it’s also well worth it, in my point of view.

Sorrento

Our last stop was Sorrento. On the bus, I was thinking that Salerno would be the perfect place to stay next time we visited Campania. Sorrento made me change my mind.

Sorrento has got a cute old town, flat and up against the sea, bright narrow streets and alleys that must have been how Naples had looked hundreds of years ago. It was in much better condition and much cleaner than anything that I had seen in Italy before.

Though something weird was going on in Sorrento. Though it was late January, they were appearing to have Christmas holidays. There was a huge Christmas tree still up in the main square, lights over every street and hanging in all the trees. What was going on?

the Sorrento Christmas tree

Even weirder was that everything was closed! I know that happened to us already in Ischia, but this was different. It was already after 6. Places should be open. Restaurants should be open. I looked on my Google maps, hitting up one restaurant after the next, each saying they were open, but upon physical investigation, appearing that they in fact weren’t. Was there a time vortex at the train station, or what? But then, why was my GPS and cell internet working? So that couldn’t have been it.

it's looking a lot like Christmas

The only thing that was open were souvenir shops, all full to the brim with bottles and bottles of limoncello, which is the local drink and is also popular throughout Campania. It’s a lemon aperitif, served cold, and tastes hardly alcoholic even though it is quite so, so it’s great to buy for the ladies.

a street in Sorrento

We were just about to give up when we finally found a restaurant, the Ristorante Pizzeria Tasso. Don’t be fooled by its name, despite its “pizzeria” title, it’s by no means the cheap restaurant we were looking for. The first menu item was a seabass for 20 euro, which is actually a good price for seabass, but a bit over the bar food kind of thing we were looking for. But as they did put “pizzeria” in the title, we felt no shame ordering pizza, which actually wasn’t that expensive, at about 8 euros each. Expensive for Campania, but not expensive for the restaurant.

A short rant on pizza

Pizza is from Naples. If you come to the Campania region, you have to eat pizza. Everything else is second. The pizza there is beyond pizza that you’ll have anywhere else. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s like every kitchen in the region has a special brick pizza oven that just makes awesome pizza. I was told to go to this pizza restaurant or that in Naples, but I’ve learned, it doesn’t really matter. Everywhere is going to have great pizza. And that was true here. And that was true everywhere. And the pizza is cheap. The standard item on the menu might be 30 euros, but they’ll still have pizza for under 10. There’s no rhyme or reason. Why should a fancy place even have pizza?

I never remember to take a pic before starting...

From Sorrento

There are two ways to go between Sorrento and Naples. That old rickety train I mentioned in my Pompeii blog, or by boat.

By boat, you can take the high-speed ferry provided by Caremar, with a transfer in Capri. It’s 20 euro to Capri, and 20 euro to Naples. There’s also a high-speed hydrofoil thru Alilaura that’s direct and only costs 13 euros, but that’s still double the price of the train. You can check all those times here or at their individual sites.

As we had the Arte Card, the choice home was obvious. We’d just take the train. And then wrap up our visit to Naples with wine on the rooftop of our hotel.

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#history #beach #touristicsites #amalfi #naples

Naples: Water for the Ancients

We made it back to Naples from our outing to Pompeii and Herculaneum with time to spare. This was where the tricky part in planning came in. Would we just wander away the day, or would we tick something else off the list to give us more room for our third day’s travel to the Almafi Coast? We decided on the latter and we headed to the underground.

Sotterranea Napoli

There are quite a few catacombs tours and entrances throughout the town of Naples. A few center around dead people—real, bonafide catacombs—and a few of the others center around the aqueduct system. To me, the civil engineering and city design history of the city is great interest to me, especially when it comes to how the ancients drank and pooped, so going for the latter-type sotterranea was an obvious choice.

above the entrance door

The Sotterranea Napoli is perhaps the most famous of the underground tours. There is no way to book ahead, and you have to go in with a tour guide. Which is good, because you can probably get lost and never found down there. The entrance is right in the middle of the old town, next to the Basilica of San Paolo Maggiore. When you’re there, you find the organizer and tell them you want an English tour (or Russian, Italian, Spanish, or whatever) and then they’ll call out your language after a bit. The Italian line is the longest, and the English line is quite a bit shorter, but I’m not sure if that holds true during the tourist season.

When we got there, we were lucky that there’s a free toilet for anyone waiting in line. We were glad to take advantage of that since we knew that there would be no toilet where we were going.

The tour starts off with a staircase leading down some 40 meters below the city, into the aqueduct system. The system was made by the first Greek settlers in 400 BC. They dug down into the tufa, a kind of soft volcanic rock, and mined the tufa to build the buildings up above. However, they mined it in a very specific way to match the plans of the city, and they created an intricate freshwater and sewage system to supply the town. Most houses above would have access to their own private aquifer, or water tank, that from within their house they could gather water.

slaves mining the tufa

If this sounds familiar from my Pompeii blog, it’s because it is. The same system that supplied water to Naples, also supplied water to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and many other towns throughout Campania, and went under an even more massive expansion and upkeep under the Emperor Augustus in 30 BC, making the system an insane 170 kilometers in length.

After they were done creating the system of tunnels, wells, and aquifers, they built an above and underground canal system from a nearby river, channeling it off to fill up the underground aqueduct system. The idea was that it would only fill up to a certain level, and the water would be continuously moving, so that there would be no still water. Still water is toxic water, after all. The wells were also designed in such a way that cleaners could be lowered down and be able to clean the water and the walls, making sure that gunk, rocks, or murdered bodies didn’t collect too much down there.

a Roman water bottle (amphora) being lowered down to get water

The aqueduct stopped being used in about the 19th century, when there was some sort of plague caused in part by the water supply. That caused the water supply to be upgraded to somewhat modern standards, and the water being drained out of the old aqueduct.

Bomb shelter

And it was a good thing the water was drained out. In the Second World War, Naples became the biggest Italian target of Allied bombing campaigns, receiving more than 200 carpet bombings in four years of the war, and 180 raids in 1943 alone. The aqueducts were the perfect places for people to hide away, often for three days to a week at a time. The tour takes you to this part of the history, where they’ve a couple of exhibits set up. One exhibit is of a large model tank, and another is of all sorts of random children’s toys they found down there. Also, part of the air raid tour, we got to see the public toilets, which didn’t really look so bad considering they were in tunnels 40 meters down. I can’t imagine the smell though.

children's toys found down below

they used to have doors

In Naples defense, it wasn’t really a center of festering Fascism. After the fall of Mussolini, the Germans invaded Italy and occupied it, partly as a preventative measure against the now disorganized Italian army, and partly because the Allies had landed on the boot and somebody had to fight them. There was a full rebellion going on, and the Nazis decided they couldn’t maintain the city between the rebellion and the advancing Allied army. So they did what they did best: they murdered hundreds of people somewhat pointlessly and ran away. The revolt though kept the city in tact, as Hitler’s plans were to completely obliterate the city after the German retreat.

More aqueduct action

After the bomb shelter tour, we were taken to an area where there were extremely tight water tunnels. They gave us little “candles”, the plastic kind you light up on the bottom found commonly in Catholic tourist trap churches, and we walked through them. They were a super tight fit, and occasionally opened up into huge man-made caverns that still stored water. All of the water there was pumped in just for the tour, but it gave a nice imagery of what it was like. This was probably the neatest part of the tour.

my wife lighting the way

one of the many water channels

Theatre

After the underground tour, they brought us out of the aqueduct and walked down a long street. There was a bit of confusion at what the point of this was, but it was an interesting conclusion to the tour. First they brought us to a small room that looked like an apartment. The occupants were doing an expansion in their cellar when they stumbled into some old walls of very interesting design. Archaeologists came down and discovered this too was part of an ancient Greek theater, and a historical preservation society has since tried to buy the various apartments that were built in the theater so that they could deconstruct the apartments and reveal the original structure. The results have been hodge podge, with bits of theater revealed, cut across at random by huge blocks of apartment. Actually, a pretty interesting part of the tour.

inside part of the theater, outside someone's apartment

Finally, they brought us around to a woodworking shop that was actually also in a part of the ancient Greek theater. The woodwork shop now hosts an exhibition of some fifty or so various nativity scenes. Neapolitans love nativity scenes. This is because Jesus comes from Naples. True story.

a couple of nativity scenes

Final thoughts

If I were to choose again which tour without having gone, I’d still pick this tour. It’s great for everyone who wants to learn some history of Naples, and who’s interested at the amazing engineering that went on to build the aqueduct system. I imagine the catacombs tours are also great, and if I’m back in Naples I’ll do one gladly, but at this point, I had had enough of dead people stuff over at Pompei. Which I know, is hard to imagine, but still. Stay tuned next week for our trip to the incredible Almafi Coast.

#history #touristicsites #Rome #theatre #museums

Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Cities of the Dead

It was finally time to see what we had come to Naples for. Or what I had come to Naples for. We were there to see dead Romans. I’m not so sure my wife was as interested in dead Romans as I was, but after that day, she was.

Pompeii wasn’t the only city buried by the exploding debris and ash that flooded out of the crater of Mount Vesuvius. There were dozens of villages, though only a few have been excavated and are able to be visited. The crown jewel is of course Pompeii, but the real diamond in the tufa is Herculaneum.

The other major ruin which shouldn’t be missed by history buffs is Cuma, where the Roman Sibyl lived, but this history buff missed it due to not having enough time, Cuma being on the other side of Naples, and my just having a massive brain fart and not realizing Cuma was in effing Naples. I am clearly no oracle.

somebody to watch over me

How to get there

There are two ways to these sites. You can take the L2 metro (metro map here) in the direction of Salerno, which is faster and far more comfortable, but drops you off a little further away both places. Or you can take the Circumvesuviana from the main station in the direction of Sorrento, which is slower, much more rickety, but takes you right practically to the doorstep of both.

seeing my dreams at Pompei

And Circumvesuviana, man, that train is like the New York metro. All the signs are busted, there’s graffiti everywhere, the doors may or may not work, and the announcement voice seemed to have been one or two stops off, when it was working. It’s safe though, so have fun.

Ruins in Italian is “scavi”, and Herculaneum is “Ercolano”, so when you’re looking for the two sites, search for Scavi di Pompei and Scavi di Ercolano.

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Herculaneum

We took the Circumvesuviana and did the 5 minute walk downhill to get to the park. No stress there. At the gates were dudes trying to sell tours. No grazie, I’ve got my own little tour in my cell phone. And was I right! There’s quite a number of app based tours, complete with maps and GPS, that are available for both sites. Download those and save yourself some time and pain. You can skim through what interests you and find the really cool stuff.

view of Vesuvius and Herculaneum

Herculaneum was a small port village for rich people, way back in the day. So there’s huge villa after huge villa, all squeezed together, in what I imagine was a bit of a tourist destination even back then. The walls are all well preserved as are the frescoes on the walls and the mosaics on the floors. There was even preserved furniture, statues, weapons, kitchen supplies, and in several instances, loaves of bread. If you want to get the feeling of how Romans were living in the ancient times, this is the village to visit, as you can walk around inside the houses at your own leisure, take a deep breath of air, and really see yourself there.

taking in the air

preserved statue outside the suburban baths

public water well on the street

The common house had an entrance relaxation room, which was usually with a fountain in the middle and an open space in the roof to let the light in. The bedrooms and the kitchen would have doors from there, unless there was another indoor room for gathering. Even bigger houses would have open gardens lined with covered walks and statues, and the really wealthy would have their own bath (which I think was only the case in Pompeii). The rooms all had mosaic-tile covered floors and brightly painted walls illuminated with mythological scenes.

the middle fountain with an opening above

floor tiles

wall mosaic and frescoes

frescoes

interior fountain/pool

Some houses had their own access to an underground aquifer system, while others people had to send their slaves to fetch water from the public fountains, which were at every corner. There were also a few cafes. A cafe would usually have a small bar area, where there would be jars inset to the surface to store hot foods. In Pompeii, the cafe culture was nearly ridiculous, as just about every other building housed a public cafe.

the holes in the counter would be covered to store hot food

Herculaneum is a small site, so it’s hard to miss stuff, and everywhere you go is something amazing. So just take your time, but just make sure you end up at the boat houses.

Romans were classy people with classy art

The boat houses were once at the beach, but are now some 20 meters from the sea. The villagers had all rushed down there, taking cover from the falling ash and pumice and waves of heat, bringing with them their valuables, hoping that the sea and the subterranean shelter would protect them from the wrath of the gods.

the boathouses, were below that plaza in the back left, then there was the sea

It didn’t.

Now what’s left are skeletons reaching to the back of the boathouses, clearly crying out in terror as the probably the vapors and smoke suffocated many them before the heat shock gave them a quick and final resting place. As this was a late find, they left the skeletons as it were, no longer doing the archeological tradition of plaster casting the bones, as they did in Pompeii.

Pompeii

After a quick lunch in the modern town of Ercolano, we hopped back on the train and went to Pompeii.

Pompeii was a town of 11,000 at the time of eruption, strategically placed underneath an active volcano. To be sure, Vesuvius is still an active volcano, so all those towns around it continue to have amazing strategic placement, and are probably either cash crops or nightmares for insurance companies. It strikes me as exceedingly weird that Naples continues sprawling around the mountain, but then again, on the other side of Naples is another active volcano, so…

the main gates and the suburban baths

The town was first settled in the 7th century BC, and was taken by Rome in the 4th century BC. It’s got well-preserved roads, walls, and statues, a bathhouse, an amphitheater, a coliseum, and dozens of other things you’d see in a major Roman town. To put it short in the words of the esteemed Macklemore, this is freaking awesome.

the volcano Vesuvius looming in the background

While I was getting my groove on to Thrift Shop after entering the ruin complex, my wife was already getting tired of the Roman fun. She did get a short thrill from the skeletons, but all the walking was already starting to wear on her. “It’s all the same.”

“No, that’s the Temple of Apollo! And that’s the Temple of Jupiter! And over there is where they celebrated the cult of the Caesar,” I said as I jumped from one ruin with big columns to another ruin with big columns, like a cricket high on crack.

view in the forum

“And here, in the forum, here’s where a guy would stand and read off the daily news, keeping everyone up to date on what was happening in the Empire. There would also be outdoor markets here, and over in the Temple, you’d have to purchase animals, perhaps right here, to pass over to the priests to slaughter for sacrifice. Actually, did you know, the Ancient Jews really kind of had the same system as the Roman pagans and the Egyptian pagans, and, and, and—” I rattled off like a five year old in a toy store.

looking the other way in the forum

This was directly after leaving the entry hut, which is a must visit. They’ve got a huge map frieze, that lights up as a video shows you what it used to look like and tells you about the location. Even though I had a tour map app on my phone, just watching the video and getting the feel where everything was almost made it unnecessary. Except that the site was freaking huge, so a map really is a must, or you’ll get pretty lost pretty easily.

the big light up map of Pompeii

What were my favorite sites?

First, a map:

As we took the Circumvesuviana, we entered at the stop right next to the site, Pompei Scavi – Villa Dei Misteri. During peak season, I’d suggest buying your tickets in advance with GetYourGuide, and you’d pick up those tickets right at the upstairs of the train station. If you’re not in peak season, it won’t be a big wait, you can go up to the gate and buy your entry there. Again, with the Arte Card, you’ll get the tickets for either free or for half-price. A lot of websites I see claim they only take cash, but that’s an utter load. They gladly take your plastic there too these days. Anyhow, there’s also an ATM there, so if by chance they’re not taking your card, then you can get to the ATM. But I paid by card myself.

the basilica, which was used as a court

After entering the forum, you can continue past it toward the amphitheater, or go down the long way to the houses. You must see the houses. And see them first, because by the time you’ll get to the other side of the town, you’ll be too tired to see anything and want to head back, and of course you won’t want to miss the major sites. Where if you did it with the major sites first, you might be tempted to miss the houses, which you shouldn’t. If that makes any sense.

a random street

The neighborhood is easy to get lost in. It’s well-cobbled street after well-cobbled street, with massive walls and doors all up and down. It was really interesting to see the Roman setup, they had streets for horse carts, which had clearly dug into the stones over the centuries centuries ago, and raised pavements for people to walk, along with huge blocks spaced for the horse carts, but high enough to easily step across from the pavements.

a narrow street , the blocks in the middle were cross walks

inside a house

a shrine to the household gods

The Forum Baths

In the neighborhood, head to the Forum Baths. That’s the first amazing thing to see. The city of Pompeii had at least four public baths, and the Forum Baths, though they weren’t the biggest, are the most well-preserved. After an earthquake a few years before the eruption, they were also the last to be used. The baths served as places to talk business, meet up with friends, and to get clean, obviously.

the locker room

You’d first work up a little sweat in the hot room, and then alternate between the hot pools and the cold pools. The hot pools were kept hot by a system of tiles and fires underneath, which would be stoked by slaves. Not your African American variety here, but often a Gaul, German, or Greek would find their fates down below the pools of Roman men (and women). The bathhouses were separated, women got their own and men got their own, though that wasn’t always the case in all villages everywhere.

a wash basin

the warming room

Many of the larger villas had their own bathhouses, and the water was pumped in by an aqueduct and a clever system of canals and aquifers. Which also meant, most houses often had their own indoor water supply, but where they didn’t, there were public fountains on nearly every corner.

The Hood

It’s hard to say which house was the best in this part. We just kind of aimlessly walked around. I’d read the descriptions on my phone of whichever interested me, and though the houses were interesting, indeed none of them were as well preserved as Herculaneum. I got the most thrill in this area just walking around, imagining myself in ancient days, people dressed in white or red sheets running around about their daily business.

another street and crosswalk

Lupanare

Speaking of their daily business, the Lupanare was the town brothel. It had really tiny rooms with small beds, each room right next to each other, and above the rooms porno murals. Really cool building. It’s kind of weird going into this site, as they’ve tried to design it that you have to enter from a certain direction, that is, from the Forum. This traffic control is because it’s a small building, and I’m guessing the most popular. Because of that, we visited this last.

two stories of love

an item on the brothel menu

Villas

After the hood, we went down a really long street with villas. Most of the villas were pretty largely intact and you could walk through, and many had their own vineyards. It wasn’t bad to be rich back then. Like now, I guess.

a winery (recreation) in the back of a villa

The Amphitheater

This was the biggest attraction. All the really big events would happen here, from major gladiatorial games to Pink Floyd concerts. Yes, Pink Floyd concerts. They played a “show without an audience” there once and filmed the whole thing. Now there’s a kind of Floyd exhibition going on in the halls.

approaching the amphitheater

This arena is also where they’d bring in wild animals and the always crowd-pleasing Christians.

someone would prefer lions to more walking!

The Grand Theater

On the way back, it’s easy to hit the Grand Theater, which also hosted gladiatorial combat, but was mostly used for acting and music concerts. It’s actually still used for that as well, with occasional operas or plays being held there. It’s a pretty massive space, easily holding a couple of thousand of people, and steeply shaped like an IMAX.

gladiators, poets, and thespians all in one show

Just imagine, what took us some 70 years of theater technology to finally innovate, they were doing 2000 years ago.

Temple of Isis

This could be a really cool spot, but it was closed with ongoing excavations, so I guess a reason to go back.

Fun fact

Pompeiians loved dicks. During the various digs, they found little (and big) dick statues everywhere. Neapolitans also like dicks and started a collection of found Pompeiian dicks at the University of Naples. They were apparently a little embarrassed by this dick fetish, so they kept the collection a secret until recently.

what to draw on an ancient wall?

Also what amazed me at Herculaneum was the sheer amount of modern dick graffiti, which just goes to show that it wasn't just the ancient Romans who've got the fetish. From what I could tell by the languages on the walls, it's mostly Russians who love penises.

Plaster casts

At first when they found skeletons in the tufa, they’d carefully try to chip away only a little bit of tufa and then extract the skeletons. After which they’d fill it up with plaster, remove the tufa and voila, you’ve the shape of a person. This is still sometimes practiced, and sometimes it’s just left as a skeleton now—as in Herculaneum. The original skeletons have been carried off to a museum near you.

I see no skeletons!

Stay tuned next week when we head off to the dark underground city far beneath Naples! If you liked this blog, share it with a friend.

#history #ruins #touristicsites #Rome #traveltips