24 February 2024 – Herculaneum

Miles driven today = 71

Total Miles to date = 1,732

We are spending tonight under the brooding gaze of Mount Vesuvius, the volcano which overlooks the Naples area and has consumed so many of its residents in times of yore.

We are in a securely gated Sosta which, much like our first night in Italy, is an AgriCamping site.  The proprietors here make their own wine so we may well purchase a bottle or two to sample before we leave in the morning.

There was a bit of excitement on our journey here from Gaeta.  We were skirting around the northern outskirts of Naples, minding our own business, when a blue Audi pulled along side us honking his horn.  The fellow in the passenger seat was waving an official looking badge at us and gesticulating that we should pull over into the next layby.  He pulled in front of us and I indicated but Lisa had been able to get a better look at them and immediately smelt a rat.  The guy didn’t look like a copper, unless he was an extra from Miami Vice, and there was no sign of any blue lights, so I accelerated past.

They caught us up and the same thing happened again.  This time they pulled in front of us and slowed right down before pulling into the next layby.  Again I accelerated past and, as we were taking the next slip road to pick up the A1 toll road around Naples, we never saw them again.  All very unnerving really as we really have no idea what their intentions may have been if we had stopped and I’m very grateful for Lisa’s intuition.

So having parked ourselves up we took the 20 minutes downhill stroll to the Roman ruins of Herculaneum.  In many of the reviews we have seen and heard a lot of people seem to actually prefer this place to Pompeii.  It’s nowhere near the scale of Pompeii but by all accounts you get more of a feel for how the buildings would have been when they were lived in 2,000 years ago.

Before we toured round the excavations themselves we had a quick look inside a building which houses this boat, which was found upturned but largely intact.

There were also examples of fishing hooks and weights and on the left is a trawl line still in its wicker container.

In Roman times Herculaneum was on the shoreline and the arches you can see at the bottom of the picture were used to store boats and fishing gear.  It seems that whereas the residents of Pompeii, on the other side of Vesuvius, were caught completely unawares when it exploded in 79AD, the civilians of Herculaneum had time to gather their belongings and await rescue.  300 bodies were unearthed from the arches here, many carrying their family treasures with them.

The town is set out in a neat grid shaped pattern of streets or Cardos and the area which has been excavated covers approximately 6 blocks.

I was intrigued by the different building techniques which were employed.

Quite a lot of the original murals can still be seen.

This would have been the Roman equivalent to a café or taverna.  Very few people would eat lunch at home.  Instead food was sold from earthenware pots to either be taken away or eaten in rooms to the rear of the building.

This painting in the College of the Augustales depicts Hercules entering into Olympus.

This was a wine shop with the painting still clearly demonstrating what was on offer inside.

More fascinatingly colourful murals.

This was the women’s bath house.  There was a separate one next door for the gents.  The shelf with the niches would have been used for storing clothes and belongings while the ladies bathed.

Some of the buildings were two or three storeys high and only the roofs were missing.  Some of these have been replaced to preserve the paintings and mosaics inside.

An impressively long corridor in one of the better preserved buildings.

You can still make out the facial details in these paintings.

Lisa earwigged on a guided tour and apparently the perspex covered lattice screen to the left is original Roman with the one on the right a modern reproduction to show how it would have looked.

Finally we had a good look around the museum of antiquities which houses many of the objects uncovered during the excavations.  This is a marble mask.

Serpent bracelets made of gold.

A necklace and assorted pendants.

Silver and bronze serving spoons and examples of Roman glassware.  All stood on a rather charred wooden table.

Row upon row of urns, jars and other storage vessels.

Marble statues of hounds hunting deer.

It took us a fair bit longer to walk back up the hill to the Sosta than it did to walk down it but we both really enjoyed Herculaneum and it’s helped to put this morning’s little incident to the back of our minds.  We haven’t been on a campsite with laundry facilities for a fortnight now, so we go in search of one tomorrow before the underwear situation reaches critical.

25 February 2024 - Oranges & Laundry