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W E L C O M E T O
T O R T I L L A B A Y . C O M
T
H E W E B S I T E O F
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SOUTHERN > AMALFI COAST
P O M P E I I
Ka-BOOM. Your life is over. This
is a sad place. And beautiful. And horny.
People, why did you build an Eden next
to an active volcano?
I highly recommend a book by
Robert Harris,
Pompeii,
a number one best-seller on the New York Times list.
Pompeii 2006 |
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Column capital Pompeii 2006 |
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Pompeii 2006
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P O M P E
I I B L O G
Street
after street of ruined homes and
temples, brothels, bathhouses and
marketplaces, Pompeii is startling to
the average person who has not seen or
experienced a natural disaster. We
walked carefully and quietly because
this was after all, a graveyard.
In
the distance we could see the fumaroles
wafting from the cone of Mt. Vesuvius,
still considered one of the most
dangerous volcanoes in the world.
Pompeii
was destroyed during a catastrophic
eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius
on 24 August 79 AD. The volcano buried
the city under many feet of ash and it
was lost for 1,600 years before its
accidental rediscovery in 1748. Since
then, its excavation has provided an
extraordinarily detailed insight into
the life of a city at the height of the
Roman Empire.
The town had became an important passage
for goods that arrived by sea and had to
be sent toward Rome or Southern Italy
along the nearby Appian Way. The
excavated town offers a snapshot of
Roman life in the 1st century, frozen at
the moment it was buried. The Forum, the
baths, many houses, and some out-of-town
villas like the Villa of the Mysteries
remain surprisingly well preserved.
Pompeii
was a lively place, and evidence abounds
of literally the smallest details of
everyday life. For example, on the floor
of one of the houses (Sirico's), a
famous inscription Salve, lucru
(Welcome, money), perhaps humorously
intended, shows us a trading company
owned by two partners, Sirico and
Nummianus (but this could be a nickname,
since nummus means coin, money).
In other
houses, details abound concerning
professions and categories, such as for
the "laundry" workers (Fullones). Wine
jars have been found bearing what is
apparently the world's earliest known
marketing pun, Vesuvinum (combining
Vesuvius and the Latin for wine, vinum).
Mt.
Vesuvius |
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Alberto
Pompeii 2006 |
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Pompeii 2006
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Pompeii 2006
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Craig
Pompeii 2006
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P O M P E I I
B L O G C O N T I N U E D
The city is
laid out on a flat and familiar municipal
grid, all the streets in a straight line.
You can still see the rutted stones worn in
lines by the wheels of chariots. Every
street has large blocks that scatter from
one side to the other at the intersections.
The public used these stones to cross the
street in order to keep their feet dry,
because every street was a shallow river of
constantly running water, that carried
trash, effluence and garbage to the river
and then to the sea.
If Rome was
created and sustained by the vast network of
roads across the empire, it was also
sustained by water, by the aqueducts that
brought snow melt from the Alps and by the
elaborate plumbing and waterway viaducts
that crisscrossed the cities. Pompeii alone
had for more than 25 street fountains, at
least 4 public baths.The aqueduct branched
out through 3 main pipes from the Castellum
Aquae, where the waters were collected
before being distributed to the city.In the
case of extreme drought, the water supply
would first fail to reach the Public Baths
(the least vital service), then private
houses and businesses, and when there would
be no water flow at all, the system would
then at last fail to supply the public
fountains (the most vital service) in the
streets of Pompeii. |
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Pompeii 2006 |
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The Castellum Aquae
Pompeii 2006 |
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Pompeii 2006 |
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Fresco Pompeii
2006
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P O M P E I I
B L O G C O N T I N U E D
Many of the private homes have been identified,
some have not. In 79 CE there were many cults of
worship - the Cult of Dionysius, the worship of
Priapus and the phallus, and others. There are
many erotic murals and the wealthy citizens
frequented the bathhouses and whorehouses
(called Lupenare, lupena meaning she-wolf) .Here
are three private homes that we especially
liked:
The House of the
Vetti
This house was owned by two freedmen who became
wealthy businessmen in Pompeii: Aulus Vettius
Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus, and from
their names the house gets its name. The
excellent excavation methods used in recovering
the house allowed the archaeologists to preserve
almost all of the fourth style wall paintings
complete after the earthquake of 62 CE.
Visitors would have been greeted by a fresco of
Priapus weighing his enormous phallus. Priapus
was a god of fertility from the Hellespont
region of Asia Minor and was associated with
important divinities of that region. His symbol
is an enormous, almost grotesque phallus. He was
adopted as a god of gardens and became something
of a combined scarecrow and guardian deity.
Here, in the foyer of the House of the Vettii,
he was meant to portray the abundant wealth and
good fortune of the house's occupants.
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At the entry to the
house of the Vetti Pompeii 2006 |
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Close-up of the entry
to House of the Vetti Pompeii 2006
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House of the Vetti
Pompeii 2006
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The
H O U S
E O F T H E F A U N
House of the Faun is the largest private
residence to be discovered in the ruins of
Pompeii. It is named for a statue of a
dancing faun in its impluvium (
an impluvium is
the basin in
an atrium for the collection of rain water,
normally connected to a cistern, most homes
had these catch basins for rain water). |
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Alberto House
of the Faun Pompeii 2006 |
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House of the Faun
Pompeii 2006
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The
T H E
V I L L A D E I
M I S T E R I
The Villa of
the Mysteries or Villa dei Misteri is a well
preserved ruin of a Roman Villa which lies
some 800 yards north-west of Pompeii.
The ownership of the Villa is unknown. The
villa is outside the main town, separated
from it by a road with funerary monuments on
either side (a necropolis) as well as the
city walls. The Villa of the Mysteries is
considered a suburban villa--one with a
close relationship to the city, but outside
the town.
Although covered with several feet of ash
and other volcanic material, the villa
sustained only minor damage in the eruption
of Vesuvius in 79 AD, and the majority of
its walls, ceilings, and most particularly
its frescoes survived largely undamaged.
The villa is decorated with very fine
frescoes. Although the actual subject of the
frescoes is hotly debated, the most common
interpretation of the images is that of
scenes of the initiation of a woman to a
special cult of Dionysus, a mystery cult
that required specific rites and rituals to
become a member.
The Villa had both very fine rooms for
dining and entertaining and more functional
spaces. A wine-press was discovered when the
Villa was excavated and has been restored in
its original location. It was not uncommon
for the homes of the very wealthy to include
areas for the production of wine, olive oil,
or other agricultural products, especially
since many elite Romans owned farmland or
orchards in the immediate vicinity of their
villas.
As in other areas of Pompeii and
Herculaneum, a number of bodies were found
in this villa, and plaster-of-paris casts
were made of them. The villa may be accessed
at no additional charge from Pompeii.
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Villa of the Mysteries
Pompeii 2006 |
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Granary House Villa
of the Mysteries Pompeii 2006 |
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Villa of the Mysteries
Pompeii 2006
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Villa of the
Mysteries Pompeii 2006
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The
T H E
D E A D R E M A I N
During
the excavation of Pompeii, archeologists
found these "negative spaces" scattered
on the floors of the villas and in the
streets. They quickly realized that
after 1600 years, the organic material
had disappeared and when they poured
plaster of paris into the holes, the
horror of Pompeii citizens suffocating
in the death throes of the volcanic dust
was revealed.
Many of
these castings have traveled the world
and they are remarkable for their detail
- down to the expressions of terror on
the faces of the citizens of one of the
most beautiful resort cities in the
Roman Empire. |
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Pompeii 2006 |
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Pompeii
citizen Pompeii
2006
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V I D E O
Here is a
video of our time in Pompeii.
Music by
Philip Glass |
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Pompeii
2006
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