POMPEII IS SO BEAUTIFUL.

I felt that I needed to get that off my chest before I typed a single word of this post. In eighth grade I took my first Latin course. Through all of my courses I’d eventually take, I learned much about Roman and Grecian cultures which heavily influenced my love for all things ancient. But in that first Latin class, the curriculum revolved mostly around Pompeii. We learned about the Iucundus family who lived there in the first century A.D. and what happened to that family after Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 and the city was covered in volcanic ash.

After seven years, I finally got to see Pompeii with my own eyes. And I have never been so blown away.

 

First of all, I’m not sure that a lot of this city can even be considered “ruins.” There were an astonishing number of homes and buildings nearly perfectly preserved, even the paint on the walls. Even the cobblestones on the road are original, the same ones walked on by the citizens of Pompeii before the eruption. In regards to the rest of the city, even the few remains pillars of some buildings are astonishingly beautiful. And I didn’t realize how big it all is. We were there for several hours and barely explored a single corner of the map.

At one point when we were walking through what was considered the “supermarket” I was walking alone ahead of the rest of my group. Alone, essentially for the first time since we began the trip to Italy, my mind told my feet to slow down and truly look around me. I was struck anew by the sheer amazement of a city still standing after being buried under volcanic ash for nearly 2,000 years. At that point tears filled my eyes as I registered how truly happy I was to be abroad; to be in Italy; to be in Pompeii after dreaming of it for so long.

When my moment of gratitude passed I called the rest of the group over to where I was standing to see yet another pair of bodies dug up during the excavation of the city. We saw many of these bodies throughout the day, some fully formed and some damaged. Our tour guide told us that to create what we were seeing, archeologists drilled holes into the ground above the bodies and poured plaster into the holes to surround the skeletons which were still frozen in the position in which they died. After allowing a few days for the plaster to harden, they dug up the bodies and viola, perfectly shaped people (and animals).

 

Walking past old shops with ovens and hot plates, it was crazy to imagine what the place must have looked like to the people who got to stroll down those sidewalks every day. There were public drinking fountains that still worked and had parts of stone rubbed away from so many people touching the same spot to lean toward the spicket. The thought of what it would have been like to do this on a daily basis, much like how I felt in the forum of Rome, truly moved me.

The only thing about this trip I didn’t enjoy was the first metro ride we were on, where we were crowded so tightly that we were packed like sardines against strangers. At this point there was an old man pressed firmly against my back who intentionally thrust his pelvic region to my butt and started gyrating his hips back and forth while actually moaning. I shoved him, hard, with my elbow and made sure to adjust my bag so that it was covering my butt. He moved away from me after that. Shoutout to Vera Bradley for having my back (quite literally).