Campania!! part two

Day Five: Pompeii

Unfortunately, the fifth day was not as clear and bright as the one before. It began with drizzle and rain which was chilly and irritating.

It rained intermittently all day, so we took shelter as best we could under umbrellas and in structures with roofs. We saw a lot of sweet villas, but we didn’t see everything I had seen with my parents. We were let into the House of the Vettii though, and also Julia Felix (a big complex near the amphitheatre), where I (being last again) thought I was locked in, even though the gate was not fastened. We also returned to the House of the Faun.

Pompeii is interesting because it wasn’t even settled by Romans until the 80s BC, after Sulla took it over. It was originally an Oscan town with lots of other influences, and fought against Rome from 100BC forward.

Ever see that show Rome?

Some of my pictures are hard to see because most places did not allow flash, and were shadowed, not to mention the gloom of the day. We did get to go into the brothel and try to read the Greek and Latin inscriptions on the wall. It read more like the graffiti you find nowadays, and was sometimes even more vulgar! We had translations in our notes.

There is so much to see in Pompeii. We saw the Garden of Refugees, and the theatres, and the amphitheatre (we had our lecture in the tunnel because it poured then). Temples to Isis, Apollo, and Jupiter, and a temple so old no one knows to whom it was dedicated. Lots of houses, and a basilica and the forum. The dogs on site liked to hang out there, and were the best fed of all dogs on site I’d ever seen! One of them decided to do some impromptu archaeology at the ancient Doric temple.

Hahaha. .. NO! BAD!

So anyway.. the day was long and full of looking and listening and note-taking, and we were wandering halfway across the city toward our final destination which was next to our exit gate, the Villa of the Mysteries, the last stop, long awaited and very famous for the room where the frescoes show what seems to be an initiation rite of some kind.

And the sky just opened up. I had borrowed Hannah’s raincoat for the day, and I had my umbrella. Many lesser umbrellas succumbed to the wind, but I weilded my three-dollar Wal-Mart purchase well (actually adjusting it to the gusts) and it held up. Not that it mattered much. Head down into the wind, I was soaked anyway and wished I had worn my boots which, though they lack arch support, would have kept my feet dry.

It was ludicrous and we’d all been scattered, and no one could see anyone except those closest to them because even though it was not terribly late yet, it was getting dark. We knew we only had a little time before the park closed. I was near Nick and Will. We didn’t know where we were going and could not see the professors, and there was thunder and lightning all around, so we dove for a nearby arched space that turned out to be pretty small, and also leaky, but we packed about seven or eight people into it. It seemed to have benches along the sides, so maybe it was designed for ancient people to take shelter from the rain. Sweet.

I take pictures at terrible times

The rain didn’t slacken and it wasn’t getting any earlier, so we all plunged back out after waiting only a little while. After fording the path to the Villa, we finally made it inside. We had to wade through a courtyard to get to the frescoes, and by then it was too dark to see. Professor C gave her lecture, though, and then we trudged home, soaked but thrilled by the ridiculousness of the day.

We survived. This is the view from our hotel, and that’s the train line below.

I had planned to work on my paper in the evenings at the hotel. Hah!

Day Six:

We visited the Villa Oplontis first, which may have belonged to Nero’s wife. It’s huge and beautiful, with lots of neat mini-gardens.

Next, we went to Herculaneum, which is more out of the way than Pompeii, and also smaller. It’s a lot more manageable, though, and the day was nicer, which also adds to the impression of a place.

You can see the second story preserved here.

Herculaneum was preserved by mudflow rather than descending ash (Pompeii) so the effect is different, and I kind of like Herculaneum better. It’s also less crowded. We saw baths and houses, and wandered around for a short time. I followed our head professor around as he sought out the town center’s political structures, after a brief stop in some really awesome houses.

OMG mosaics

This is where the shore used to be. There were a lot of people trying to escape by boat who got trapped here.

We weren’t in Herculaneum for long, because we had an appointment in Stabiae. We stopped for a “Franco surprise” lunch at a great restaurant where we were informed that we were at the place of the world’s most important pasta. It was pretty good.

Stabiae is where the image of Flora comes from, which is the poster outside my door at the Centro. I bought a poster of it for myself, to redecorate my dorm room (and eventual apartment):

(Removed by Bourbons, now in Naples Museum)

The Bourbons were not especially concerned with preservation, and in fact roughed up the frescoes they did not take, so that no one else could have them either.

Hey! Jerks!

I really liked the two villas we visited at Stabiae (Arianna and San Marco). They gave me further proof that gardens were mostly only for looking at, and they had a sweet view. Here, as with most of the places we saw, the sea used to be closer in.

(Vesuvius view from Stabiae)

Day Seven

The next morning we went to the Villa Regina at Boscoreale, but it was raining again, so I didn’t really take any pictures. The museum was really cool though, and showed all kinds of preserved household items from the villa. Regina was a working villa (like Centro Due) with grain and olive presses or wine presses and stuff like that. I saw one up close and personal in the eerie dark of the Villa of the Mysteries, so I was fine with just looking at the model in the museum.

Capua, too, was a bit of a slog. We went to the museum first, which was thankfully indoors.. Then to the Mithraeum underground. The worship of the eastern god Mithras (who in the 14^th century BC was a Hittite god of trees, and in the 4^th-2^nd centuries, was a sun god) was one of the popular mystery cults for men in the Roman world, especially the military.

They gathered on the benches along the side. The front has Mithras killing the white bull.

From there, we went to the amphitheatre at Capua, but it was so cold and windy and rainy that we mostly just stayed inside the museum to hear about beast-fights and look at the pieces of the amphitheatre that were there, and really cool. We did pause to look at the real amphitheatre, but when you’ve seen one, and it’s freezing… well..

We didn’t even stay there for lunch, but went as a group to Montecassino where we went to a café. Franco called ahead for us, so they were ready. We had an awesomely American-like lunch of pizza, fries, and cappuccino (okay maybe not..) before going to our very last site of the Campania trip.

Montecassino is the site of a really intense battle that happened in WWII, when the Allies had to take the summit, where their enemies were holed up in the monastery on the mountaintop. The bus trip was intense and I can’t imagine trying to scale that thing under friendly circumstances, let alone to take it from an enemy. I guess the Greeks were on to something with their citadel plan. It was freezing, but the monastery is beautiful. I saw photos which showed that the whole thing is a rebuilding because the top of the mountain was basically blown up by the end of things. Still, the church was really lovely, and we happened to be there when the monks were about to sing Vespers. Johnny had been telling me to go check out Montecassino, so I’m really glad it was on our list, because I’m not sure how I would have gotten there otherwise.

Note the snow-capped mountains in the background.

What we visited wasn’t really the war memorial, that was a little further down, because I saw it out the bus window. Nonetheless, it was intense and a little hard to take.