J and I spent the day learning about the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii. Both towns were destroyed when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. Herculaneum was covered with lava from the volcano while Pompeii was covered under 30 feet of hot volcanic ash. It is for this reason that Herculaneum is better preserved then Pompeii. Because of the hot lava, everything was almost instantly carbonized. It was amazing to walk around the ruins and see how civilized and progressive these towns were, thousands of years ago!
Here is a picture of Vesuvius.
J outside of Herculaneum. Herculaneum was the rich, resort town. Therefore it was much smaller then Pompeii.
Here is a view of Herculaneum. You can see that it is quite a bit lower then the modern city. This is where the old coast of the Mediterranean Sea was before the volcano erupted.
Here is a picture of some mosaics. It just blows my mind that these have survived for so long, and they survived through a volcano!!
Inside the women's bath house - I loved that we were able to walk around and actually be right inside the ruins! This civilization was so evolved and smart that they had in their bath house complex, a large changing room, a cold swimming pool and a hot sauna room - all right next to each other, just designed differently from the other!
This is inside the sauna room. You can see (thanks to the fallen ground) that they had an underground heating system. Also in the corner of this picture you can see the tiled decorations in the floor. This was a fancy place!
We were told that people were shorter then, but really could they possibly have been this short?!
This is one of the court yards in Herculaneum. The interesting thing about this is that these are the original trees that were planted here when the volcano erupted. Archeologists uncovered the original seeds (which had been carbonized under the lava) and discovered that the trees were crabapple trees, which is what is planted here.
This is a view of Herculaneum and you can see that above the ruins is the modern day city. They believe that Herculaneum is bigger then this excavated part, but since the modern city is built on top, they will never be able to uncover the rest of the ancient city.
Ancient fast food restaurant. Seriously, that's what it is. The shop owner would pre-make meat, soup, or some other food and put them in these large insulated jugs to keep until they could be sold to the men during the day.
A town on the market street. They say that the shop owners had their shop downstairs and lived upstairs.
Us on the main market street in Herculaneum.
After lunch, we then went to Pompeii to see the bigger city. It was also very interesting.
This is the smaller theater in Pompeii. We weren't able to make it to the big one, but we were still quite impressed by this one. The engineers knew enough about acoustics and had this designed specifically for musicians.
This is part of the city center. Surrounding the main open area were these huge pillars which held two floors. Most of them tipped over when the volcano erupted.
This is a view of the central market place. Vesuvius in in the background. This square was a solid marble floor, but it was taken away to build a castle.
The crosswalk (or zebra stripes as the English and our guide say). These streets were often flooded with water, so the towns people used these crosswalks to get from one side of the street to the other side. There is also the theory that these streets were also used as a sewage system for the town. Herculaneum was one step ahead of Pompeii in that respect. Herculaneum had an underground sewage system.
Another picture in the ancient city.
After this long and HOT day visiting the ancient ruins, we went back to the pool (of course). We had a wonderful dinner in Sorrento by the water. It was so lovely, and we sadly forgot the camera!
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