The Last Days of Pompeii...and Herculaneum

Bathhouse in Pompeii. Photo by Lucia Mauro

One of Italy's most visited sights, Pompeii can be a daunting proposition for travelers who typically avoid crowds. Yet the ancient Roman city, which perished in Mount Vesuvius' massive volcanic eruption of 79 AD, is so expansive visitors can find themselves, at times, in quieter frescoed corners. Recently, when my husband Joe and I were staying with friends in Castellammare di Stabia (a small port town just outside Naples), we arrived at Pompeii's much-coveted scavi on a warm, unrushed spring day. On their way to work and errands, they dropped us off on the less-traditional entrance near the Amphitheater - far from the umbrella-bobbing tour groups that congregate at the main entry point around the Basilica and Temple of Apollo. Now, Pompeii naturally attracts a substantial number of enthusiastic group travelers. So I'm no solitary snob; I just prefer to wander around and make my own discoveries.

It's a sad and intriguing irony that Mount Vesuvius' lava and ash destroyed this thriving metropolis but also acted as a sturdy preservative. Many civilians and their pets were frozen at the point in which they breathed their last. The city itself, though quite wealthy, consisted of individuals from various classes. Because streets and buildings remain relatively intact, visitors can truly walk in the footsteps of ordinary people going about their lives just before a mammoth natural disaster buried their world. Pompeii lay silent until 1748 when excavations began. Discoveries continue to this day, making the area a potent buried treasure of daily Roman life.

The huge unearthed Amphitheater (built in 80 BC), however, reveals Pompeii's brutal grandeur, with gladiator quarters still visible. Remnants of columns, frescoes and cleverly carved fountains surrounded us as we made our way toward the main entrance. Via dell'Abbondanza served as one of the city's main transportation arteries. It cuts through shops, brothels, bathhouses and middle-class homes. The walls still sport a faded cranberry hue and graffiti that ranges from the comic to the crude. And speaking of crude, perhaps Pompeii attracts so many crowds because sex really does sell. Who could resist giggling at the brothel frescoes blatantly advertising each woman's specialty, or the abundance of phallic art (including Priapus, the infamous god of fertility, weighing his gargantuan member on a scale in the House of Vettii)?

But Pompeii is more than the sum of its weighty sensuality. It, more prominently, reveals a boldness and grace - a fully functioning and flourishing society unencumbered by a fear- and shame-inducing morality. Its behavioral codes were of the secular, but no less respected, kind. Of course, the ancient Romans certainly had their flaws. But their achievements in everything from arts and letters to plumbing and engineering never cease to overwhelm me.

I always enjoy exploring the luxurious Stabian Baths, with their varying degrees of water (hot, lukewarm and cold) and spa treatments. The Romans were among the first to understand and celebrate the mind-body connection. Among the most impressive sights is the Villa of the Mysteries, a tranquil preserved estate accessed via a quiet road brimming with red-poppy fields. With its beautifully detailed friezes of Dionysian themes, it overlooks the city and manages to balance soothingly sunny terraces with the cool breezes afforded by perfectly positioned courtyards.

From the Villa of the Mysteries, we were able to catch the convenient Circumvesuviana train (that literally means circling Vesuvius) to another volcanic victim: Herculaneum (Ercolano in Italian). Sort of the unsung sibling of Pompeii, this stretch of ancient territory is actually better preserved. Plus, it was an all-around ritzier enclave that did not suffer such a devastating fate, as the citizens were able to escape during the earliest rumblings of Vesuvius. Still undergoing excavation, Herculaneum met more of an ash- than a lava-coated destiny. It also offers a more intimate experience than its famous neighbor. Again, its abundance of public baths, mythological frescoes and sculptures, ornate furnishings, and an arena point to an advanced civilization in the midst of a golden age of culture, scholarship and economic power.

A visit to Pompeii and Herculaneum must be supplemented by a trip to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, where most of the recovered art and artifacts are on display. They essentially fill in the blanks about Roman life pre-79 AD.  Located along Naples' busy main drag of Via Toledo/Via Roma, the museum (a former Renaissance palazzo with an incongruous pastel-pink façade) houses one of the largest collections of classical antiquities in the world.

Once inside the echoing main lobby, we were welcomed by a parade of marble Dionysian gods juxtaposed against epaulet-bedecked security guards looking like Napoleonic soldiers. We spent an entire day here mesmerized by delicately fissured mustard-yellow and pomegranate-red frescoes from Pompeii; intimate trinkets from a noble Roman woman's toilette; and an enormous concentration of phallic symbols (most found in the Secret Collection, an ancient erotic peep show).

Most of the mythological sculptures hail from the wealthy Farnese family collection. They include the Farnese Bull (a gigantic single block of marble depicting the horrific death of the cruel Dirce by being tied to the horns of a bull), a rather pensive Hercules, and effeminate Eros. Overall, these sculptures are Roman copies of Greek works and can be traced to Rome's Baths of Caracalla. Others were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The ground floor, flooded with sarcophagi, evokes a crypt and extends to an outdoor "graveyard" of dramatically carved obelisks. It's easy to walk around in a daze of draped marble tunics and muscular nudes. But the National Archaeological Museum is an indispensable guide to an ancient culture that worshiped the human form as divine; held fertility rituals in high esteem; and was as devoted to intellectual pursuits as it was to physical pleasures.

One statue on the second floor resembles a mummy case. No doubt a fertility goddess, she sports a dozen egg-shaped breasts and a golden cape decorated with lions and griffins. Her coat glistens like the long tunic of the contorted woman in Gustav Klimt's painting, The Kiss. Her face and out-turned palms were crafted of smooth ebony.

Another floor honors bronze athletes and heads of young boys, whose vividly realistic eyes can pierce one's heart. Another area recreates in frescoed and mosaic bliss the glorious grass greens, tangerine oranges and spun golds of the Pompeiian palette. An abundance of Perseus and Andromeda images, a bathing Aphrodite, and black-and-clay-orange vessels painted with Minotaurs can easily give visitors polytheistic palpitations. One floor is devoted to Pompeiian glass, bronze, ceramic and wooden artifacts, such as clip-on earrings, cracked hand mirrors and smashed gladiator helmets. The Mezzanine displays the expansive Pompeiian Alexander mosaic, with the titular Great defeating the Persian army. But nearby papyrus diaries and official documents temper the passion and violence of these walls.

Far from antiquated and irrelevant, these ancient Roman remnants reflect the desires and conflicts of every age - even our own.

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